DepEd targets 2.5M children for pre-school enrolment in 2011

THE Department of Education (DepEd) is strengthening its drive for universal kindergarten schooling and is targeting 2.5 million children in the coming school year.

Education Secretary Armin Luistro said that they are currently reaching out to more than half a million
school-aged children who were not able to enroll in May last year.

“This new year, we are renewing our commitment to reach all children of school age as part of our intensified efforts towards achieving the ‘Education For All’ or EFA commitment,” Luistro said.

Part of the priorities of the Education department is to implement the universal public kindergarten program for 5-year-olds to give new entrants basic education.

Luistro said that the department will do a ground mapping of all school-aged children through a pre-registration all over the country starting on January 15.

“The pre-registration will not only allow us to determine the interventions needed to ensure that the EFA commitment is within the department’s reach, but it will also enable us to have a wider reach of children who are deprived of basic education,” he added.

From the 1.914 million who were reached in 2010 in both public and private schools, the Education department aims to increase the number of preschool children it will serve to almost 2.5 million—or a 21-percent increase for school year 2011 to 2012.

Among the steps involved to accomplish this target is adding more teachers at the pre-school level.

There are currently 29,615 pre-school teachers in the country. From that number, only 2,299 teachers hold permanent positions and the rest are contractuals.

Luistro also said that the department is targeting to open more than 700 permanent teaching positions this year and accommodate more than 10,000 teachers through contract of service.

The department has a total of 29,615 pre-school classrooms and is appealing to donors and other education stakeholders to provide financial support for the construction of more classrooms for kindergarten.

“A lot of challenging tasks are ahead of us. We should address all aspects of the essential learning inputs so we can catch up. We know that we cannot hurdle all these alone. We need everyone’s support, specifically the private sector and other community stakeholders, to upgrade the quality of the public school system in our country,” Luistro said.

Besides kindergarten-age children, the department is also focusing on the 2.42 million 6-year-olds enrolled in Grade 1.

The department is currently doing the groundwork on the 12-year basic education cycle or the Enhanced K+12 program. Under the proposal, universal kindergarten schooling should be implemented this coming school year. –MARIA NIKKA U. GARRIGA, Manila Times