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FOR the geographically challenged, BESRA sounds like
a place in Iraq. Or maybe a new Disney character. It could also be
an upcoming rock and roll band. It actually stands for Basic
Education Sector Reform Agenda—the overarching goal of the
Department of Education (DepEd) to attain functional literacy by
2015. It is now in its second year of implementation.
Getting our children to school is
relatively easy; making them stay is the harder part. For any parent
out there, tuition at least is predictable, even if a large sum. It
is the day to day maintenance expenses plus the unexpected that
drive children out of school. The answer is a combination of
strategies to strengthen the holding power to at least reduce the
incidence of dropouts. Thus, we have the Preschool Education Program
and the School Feeding/Food for Schools Program.
There is a standard curriculum
developed by the DepEd recommended for daycare centers, classes
operated by local governments and nongovernmental organizations and
private ones. Children are given foodstuff like fortified rice,
milk, noodles and biscuits for 120 feeding days to improve their
nutrition. Strong minds and health bodies, right?
The numbers continue to boggle
strong minds. In 2007, the combined public and private enrolment in
basic education reached 19.7 million, one percent higher than the
figure in 2006. Putting it cheap at P1,000 per child, that is
already P19.7 billion. There are 45,430 public schools nationwide
comprised of 37,352 elementary schools, 5,078 secondary schools and
3,000 community learning centers. Costing schools at a barebone
P300,000 and you do the math.
There is some good news. Year on
year, there is an increase of 11.77% in the average achievement
scores of students in English, Science and Math. It will take many
years of consistent gains for us to bring our state of education to
acceptable levels. In the meantime, the bureaucracy is being
streamlined, projects are strengthened and monitored.
We wail of our deteriorating
English. It is always the refrain of, “In our time, it used to be
like this.” The singular cause for this are flip-flopping policies
on the use of English or Filipino or even vernacular to teach kids.
Legislators, academics, professionals and wisecracks have argued to
heaven and hell and back. Pointless to me when Taiwan with little
English and Japan with no English are the leading economies. America
with English is the number one superpower and English as it is the
universal language. It does not and cannot be an either-or scenario.
By all means, we can be bilingual and fluent in both. The greatest
legacy of our Spanish masters is our Catholic faith; from our
American enslavers, English and our system of government,
bastardized it may be.
A host of issues continues even
with the suspension of the centerpiece CyberEd program which could
have revolutionized our way of learning. To those who say we should
build schools and buy more textbooks before trying out technology,
imagine if we had to wait for everyone to have landlines before
cellphones were allowed.
This brings to the final point of
KOK teachers. KOK of course stands for karaoke. Nope, teachers are
not moonlighting or quitting their jobs for a singing career. For
all the dire predictions, we ask, what can we do? Simple: go out and
buy a karaoke unit for our teachers. At 45 students to a class, the
teachers’ voice is thinning quickly and they get tired easily
having to speak at the top of their larynx. A basic device like the
microphone (preferably with lapel clip) will free the teachers to do
what they do best—mentor our students. All those socio-civic
organizations and congressmen, we have enough waiting sheds, let’s
focus resources on the key pillar in our education sector reform –
our teachers. Our students are as good as our teachers are. The
spring can never rise higher than its source. Innovative ideas with
high impact need not be expensive. It only needs a thinking man like
Director Paul Soriano at the DepEd for a solution like this and for
us to act.
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