This paper explores how left behind children (LBCs) of emigrant women experience and make use of familial and educational investment on 'getting ahead' in thinking about their futures. On the one hand, these efforts of Filipino families figure in the imaginary of transnational migration as the ticket to better life. On the other hand, it surfaces in Philippine education's desire for global competitiveness through educational reform. This paper argues that these attachments to 'getting ahead' in life and in education have resulted to LBCs being 'left behind' in physical, structural, and figurative terms. They grapple with these failed promises by tapping into local collective solidarities and breaking away from previously circulated imaginaries of the good life in assessing potential mobile futures.