Battling the classroom shortage By Patricia Esteves | Updated April 9, 2009 - 12:00am (Philippine Star) 0 0 googleplus0 0

a day to accommodate 50 students per class, the shortage is 6,832. This shortage necessitates a third shift to accommodate more students like Milliyah. This school year, in preparation for the influx of students, the Department of Education has allocated P1.7 billion for the construction of new classrooms and repair of old ones. It hopes to meet its target of 1,690 new and repair of 1,282 classrooms all over the country. In tune with the Education for All program, one of the key points under the governments 10-point agenda, President Arroyos school building project has built 396 classrooms; congressmen and senators, 1,740; donations of overseas-based Filipinos, 500; DepEd and DPWH, 450; and 116 classrooms from the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry Inc. (FFCCCII). President Arroyo has just recently donated P35 million to the FFCCCII for its school projects, and signed EO 284 authorizing the federation to conduct fund-raising for its Operation Barrio Schools project, likewise exempting donors from taxes. The government admittedly said it needs the help of private organizations and foundations to address the issue of building more classrooms for the growing population of elementary and high school students in public schools, especially in remote parts of the country. FFCCCII vice chairman for media William Tieng told the STAR they have been donating classrooms since 1955,

MANILA, Philippines - Forty-five-yearold banana vendor Lilia Pangilinan is worried that come June this school year, her eight-year-old daughter Milliyah will be placed in an evening shift again. Lilia, who lives in a shanty with four other children, lamented Milliyahs evening schedule in a public elementary school last year since she always stayed up late at night to finish her assignments or study for exams. The night schedule was also taking a toll on the young childs stick-thin body, and the girl had to walk home alone at night because her mother could not fetch her. With more students enrolling in and transferring from private schools, public schools are forced to implement a threeshift schedule for elementary and high school students in some Metro Manila schools. Education secretaries have come and go, but all have agreed about the real problem of classroom shortage. According to the Department of Education, the current studentclassroom ratio is 100-to-1 in single shift and 50-1 in two shifts. Former education secretary Juan Miguel Luz said in the past that to hold a singe shift, the ideal situation for every classroom in the country meant a shortage of 74,115 classrooms. To go on a double shift using classrooms twice

having constructed 4,000 school buildings (of two classrooms each) and 10,000 classrooms at half the estimated cost. The FFCCCII is the first to start the two-classroom school building donations through Operation Barrio schools. We hope to build 11,000 classrooms to help improve the learning of schoolchildren, We feel that by helping in the education of the youth, we will bring forth a new generation of educated Filipinos, he said. The Angelo King Foundation Inc. (AKFI) also builds not just classrooms but whole buildings/ learning establishments for poor students, in line with its philosophy that providing for the poor is synonymous to teaching them how to fish and fend for themselves. In San Miguel Elementary School, Tarlac, the principal and teachers hold fund-raising activities to raise money for their school needs and augment funds for the improvement of their school. Both local government units and private sector In Nueva Ecija are joining forces to add more classrooms in public schools in the province, said Jess Lorenzo, a public education development advocate in Nueva Ecija who also works with the San Isidro local government. These examples of cooperation between local government units and the private sector, and among teachers, barangay personnel and parents in the community is doing much to inspire other communities to get to work and share what they can to improve the public school environment. Last year,

soldiers and military personnel put aside their guns to repair and refurbish many public schools. With stakeholders concerted effort, greater commitment from the government and the private sector, theres hope in winning the battle over classroom shortage and other education woes. English vs. the Mother Tongue? By Rachel C. Barawid February 26, 2009, 10:06am The Manila Bulletin We have become a nation of fifth graders! remarked Josefina Cortes, dean of the University of the East (UE) Graduate School and former UE president. The sad results of a literacy survey conducted in 2003 further validate her assumption. Of the 57.59 million Filipinos aged 10 to 64 years old chosen as respondents for the Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS), 5.24 million Filipino could not read and write, while 7.83 million could not read, write and compute. Worse, the same survey finds that 18.37 million Filipinos could not read, write, compute and comprehend! The survey also reveals that the illiteracy rate among the poor is even more alarming, with one out of two people (46%) not being able to understand what they read. In an effort to address this, some solons have consolidated their pertinent bills to maximize the use of English in schools

and be able to produce more globally competitive graduates. GO ENGLISH! House Bill 5619 (Consolidated EnglishOnly Bill by Cebu Reps. Eduardo Gullas and Raul Del Mar and Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Villafuerte) aims to strengthen and enhance the use of English as the Medium of Intruction (MOI) from the elementary to tertiary levels. Currently on its third and final reading, the bill seems set to be approved with some 202 of the 238 members of the House backing it up. However, Valenzuela Rep. Magtanggol Gunigundo claims his Multilingual Education (MLE) and Literacy Bill (House Bill no. 3719) is the better alternative to the English Bill. Strongly supported by the academe, government and private organizations and linguistic experts from the University of the Philippines and the Linguistic Society of the Philippines, Gunigundo vows to stop the passage of the English Bill by seeking to convince other solons of the more beneficial merits of the MLE. Under the English Bill, English, Filipino or the regional/native language may be used as the teaching language in all subjects from preschool to Grade 3. But from Grades 4 to 6, all levels in high school and college, English shall be promoted as the language of interaction in schools, as well as the language of assessment in all government examinations, all entrance tests in public schools as well as state universities and colleges. If enacted, the Bill is said to supersede Department of Education (Deped) Order No. 25s Bilingual Teaching Policy.

Under the MLE bill, students in the preschool up to Grade 6 will be taught in their first language or L1. This includes the teaching of subjects like math, science, health and social studies. As they develop a strong foundation in their L1, the students will be gradually introduced to the official languages Filipino and English orally and then in the written form. English and Filipino, meanwhile, will be taught strongly as separate subjects. A press release from Gullas office reasoned out that students skills in the English language have weakened with the more prominent use of Taglish (a blend of English and the local dialect). Mounting global unemployment due to the worsening economic slump has merely underscored the need for our human resources to be proficient in English the worlds lingua franca in order to stay highly competitive in the job markets here and abroad, Gullas said in the press statement. Students and Campuses Bulletin would have wanted to hear more and straight from Gullas, also an educator, but we were given the round around by his staff and the solon himself. GO MOTHER TONGUE! Gunigundo downplays Gullas reason that using English as a medium of instruction improves English proficiency as mere popular belief. How can you defend on anecdotal gut feel when there is empirical data culled by linguistic experts not only in Philippines but also in the US, Europe and Africa, that show this is the way to do it. If you really want the Philippines to

have a high functional literacy, lets use the regional languages, the mother tongue of the children in giving them the education that they need. No amount of textbooks, classrooms, teacher training and computers will lift the quality of education if youre using the wrong language, Gunigundo explains. Dr. Ricardo Ma. Nolasco, associate professor, UP Department of Linguistics, has long been a proponent of the MLE campaign, even teaming up with Gunigundo in pushing for this bill in Congress. The issue of language in education in the Philippines is a learning issue and a very urgent one. Filipino children are not learning because they cannot understand what the teacher is saying. The language in school is not THEIR language. We are pushing for the use of the mother tongue in the elementary grades in order to develop the childs cognitive skills and to provide a solid foundation towards learning in Filipino and English in the higher grades, stresses Nolasco who is also a board member of the Linguistic Society of the Philippines and the adviser for multilingual education initiatives of the Foundation for Worldwide People Power Inc. There are currently over 150 dialects aside from the Filipino language that are being used as the first language of many young Filipino children. Studies also reveal that it normally takes 12 years for a child to have a strong foundation in his first language that will facilitate the acquisition of a second, third and fourth language. That is what we want. We want our country to deliver quality education to

the Filipino youth and the best way to do this is by using the first language of the child. Why are we demoting the regional languages? Are we saying the regional languages are inferior to Filipino and to English? That only English is the language known in this world that can deliver knowledge in math and science? Thats not correct. Our language is a living lingua franca, its not a puristic Filipino that were talking about. Its universal and embraces so many words including Chinese and Spanish. Moreover, he says being proficient in English is not a sign of a well-educated person. Even former US president George Bush committed a lot of grammatical syntactical mistakes during his presidency, and hes a native English speaker. Kung English lang talaga ang way to go up for social nobility, eh di dapat ang mga Americano ang no. 1 sa lahat, he adds. Nolasco adds that this innovative approach to learning will produce multiliterate, multi-lingual and multi-cultural learners who can interact harmoniously with people of various cultural backgrounds. Through MLE, Nolasco points out that children will be more encouraged to take an active part in the learning process because they understand what is being discussed and what is being asked of them. By using their own language, they will be able to articulate their thoughts and express themselves better. Moreover, Nolasco says MLE will also empower the teachers as they become fluent and adept in the local language, as well as the parents who will be more involved in the education of their

children because they all speak the same language. MLE, thus, brings the school and its programs closer to the community. NOT JUST CONVERSATIONAL LANGUAGE While many cant seem to see the point in still learning in the language they already know, Nolasco clarified that what they may refer to is the conversational or everyday language used for daily interaction. This conversational language, he explains, is quite different from the academic and intellectualized language needed to discuss more abstract subjects. According to studies, it takes one to three years to learn conversational language but four to seven years to master the academic language under well resourced conditions. It also takes time to develop higher order thinking (HOT) skills and this depends largely on cognitively demanding curricula especially from Grade 4 onwards, he says. According to him, the use of MLE is also expected to spur the second language industry, decentralize graft and corruption in the making of materials and teaching of methodology and will ultimately, revolutionize the thinking of many Filipinos whose reasoning skills will be further developed. DepEd to develop learning aids in dialects to boost mother-tongue multilingual education By Rainier Allan Ronda | Updated December 1, 2011 - 12:00am) (THE PHILIPPINE STAR)

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Education (DepEd) will allocate more funds for the development of learning aids and materials in the various dialects as it seeks to bolster mother tongue-based multilingual education in public preschools and elementary schools all over the country. Education Secretary Armin Luistro said the development of the learning materials will go full speed ahead especially with his release of guidelines on the use of funds to develop learning materials for schools offering mothertongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE). The languages used for instruction and learning under the MTB-MLE include Iloko, Pangasinense, Kalangoyan, Kapampangan, Sambal, Tagalog, Minangyan, Bikol, Hiligaynon, Aklanon, Cebuano, Waray-Waray, Chavacano, Yakan, TBoli, Surigaonon, Adasen, Bunungan, In Laud, Maranao and Maguindanaon. Mother tongue-based education prescribes the use of the language learners speak at home or in their respective provinces in delivering lessons and in classroom discussions. MTB-MLE is implemented from preschool up to Grade 3 and in the alternative learning system. He said producing educational materials that suit the specific needs of learners will result to better learning outcomes. Luistro explained that DepEd came up with the guidelines to synchronize and decentralize the production of indigenized teaching and learning

materials as well as in the monitoring and evaluation of the MTB-MLE. Local and international studies show that the use of the learners mother tongue or the language used at home is the most effective medium of learning. It is the easiest way for children to access the unfamiliar world of school learning, Luistro explained. Educators say that when the use of mother tongue is discarded in favor of an unfamiliar language upon the childrens entry into grade school, the learners lose interest in their studies because there is a disconnect in the language used at home and in school. Based on DepEd Order 90, the types of learning materials to be developed are story books in big and small book formats; flash/activity cards using letters and numbers; basic sight words (grade level words and picture dictionary) and thematic picture chart for oral literacy. The guidelines also specified that 50 percent of the allocated funds should go to the development and reproduction of the teaching and learning materials; 20 percent for monitoring and evaluation; 15 percent for research and 15 percent for transportation. DepEd piloted the implementation of MTB-MLE in school year 2010-2011 in 879 public elementary schools nationwide. As of November 2011 some 2,288 field officials, non-government organizations, local government units, parent-teacher-community associations and teachers have been trained to ensure the effective integration of this initiative into the curriculum.