Lapus pushes for enactment of mandatory pre-school education

MANILA, March 9 (PNA) - The Department of Education (DepEd) on Monday asked Malacañang to certify as urgent a bill that seeks a mandatory pre-school education in public schools to strengthen academic preparation of children.

Believing there should be equal opportunities for both the poor and the rich children, outgoing DepEd Secretary Jesli Lapus pushed for the immediate passage of Senate Bill (SB) 2953, or the Governance of the System of Pre-School Education.

“This bill will greatly increase our students’ readiness for formal schooling,” he said.

“Our pupils’ first school experience should be enjoyable, so that this positive experience will motivate them to remain in school and complete their education,” he said.

DepEd’s proposed quality pre-school education involves adoption of a standard curriculum, a training and hiring program for pre-school day care’s teachers’ development, a nutrition and health program for students, construction of schoolrooms, and distribution of learning supplements to students.

To encourage parents to send their children to school, the government continues to implement the no collection policy in public schools.

“We are strictly enforcing the ‘no collection policy’ and ‘no mandatory uniform policy.’ We’re also implementing the allocation of cash subsidy for selected poor but deserving students,” he said.

The financial program will ease poor families’ cash burden and enable them to focus on rearing their children toward more productive education, he said.

The DepEd-supported bill aims to expand quality pre-school education in all public elementary schools for students aged five years and above. This will reduce children’s drop-out rate at the Grade 3 level from the more than 20 percent drop-out rate in previous years.

“Our public schools should have pre-schools for children aged five years just like what they have in schools for the more well-off,” he said.

“The law must correct social injustice. The minority wealthy Filipinos enjoy two to three years of pre-school to be ready for Grade 1. But the majority or 90 percent of our children must jump to Grade 1 immediately, so drop-out rate is high.”

SB 2953 is pending in the Senate’s Committee on Education, Arts, and Culture for committee report, and its Lower House counterpart, House Bill 5496, has been approved on third reading.

It is estimated that a total of 1.4 million pre-school students are already benefiting from the program. DepEd already started implementing the program even before the approval of the bill mandating pre-school education in public schools.

Of this number, the majority or 970,000 are from public schools. This number of beneficiaries also accounts for a significant 31.08 percent increase in enrollment from the 740,000 students benefited in 2008.

As an incentive to teachers, the government upgraded to permanent position the status of 2,300 teachers. It also granted additional allowances and honorarium to other teachers. It is presently training almost 24,000 pre-school teachers and day-care workers on the new curriculum.

In school year 2009-2010, DepEd distributed instructional materials and manipulative toys to a total of 13,000 pre-schools, including schools for the gifted and for persons with disabilitites (PWDs).

With its implementation of the pre-school program, DepEd said that 69 percent of 2.4 million pupils that were about to attend Grade 1 passed a readiness test. This is a marked increase from the 36 percent readiness of pupils in previous years. (PNA)
RMA/HCT/utb