DepEd’s 270B budget will be spent wisely, not a single centavo will go to waste – Luistro

MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Education (DeEd) will judiciously spend the record high P207 billion it was given for 2011.

Before the grant of the huge budget, which saw a 19 percent hike from this year’s P175 billion, Education Secretary Armin Luistro said he has already ordered the DepEd bureaucracy to simplify operations and ensure efficient spending of public funds.

“We will make sure that every peso of the P270 billion budget for 2011 will be spent wisely to ensure that we are able to provide for essential learning inputs, especially teacher items and classrooms,” Luistro said.

“I can assure you that not a single centavo will go to waste,” Luistro vowed.

Luistro stressed that while the DepEd gets a huge slice of the national budget, this was barely adequate for personnel services, from which they get funds to pay the salaries of the half a million public school teachers all over the country, and pay for the construction of classrooms and school buildings and purchase other necessities in education.

However, Luistro said that DepEd was already happy with the bigger budget given them, saying it will allow them to pursue priority initiatives by next school year 2011-2012.

“Certainly, the bigger allocation — from P175 billion in 2010 to P207 billion in 2011 — means that we can now start to plug shortages and provide for basic learning resources,” said Luistro.

This year, DepEd is set to implement the universal public kindergarten program for five-year-olds to give new entrants to basic education the proper preparation on the rigors of schooling.

“For the first quarter of 2011, we will focus on providing for universal kindergarten facilities for five-year-olds. I am confident that we will be able to do that especially with the help of many committed stakeholders,” Luistro added.

It will be recalled that the much-ballyhooed K+12 or Kindergarten plus 12 years program of DepEd to be started next year, seeks to turn the current 10-year basic education curriculum with six years of elementary schooling and four years of high school, into 12 years with a compulsory kindergarten or preschool level.

The bid to set up preschools in all public schools is part of DepEd’s campaign to bring all school-aged children to school. DepEd is confident that it remains on track to meet the country’s Education For All (EFA) commitment by 2015.

Teachers support DepEd move to put up kindergarten in all public schools

Public school teachers expressed its support to the move of the Department of Education (DepEd) to put up kindergarten in all public schools, but said that DepEd should make sure to build the necessary classrooms, and hire the pre-school teachers who will provide quality pre-school education.

Benjo Basas, national chairperson of the Teachers’ Dignity Coalition, said that public school teachers support DepEd’s pre-school program to be pursued starting school year 2011-2012, but they were keenly watching DepEd’s next moves especially in laying out the requirements of having kindergarten in all public schools.

DepEd has set a target of serving almost 2.5 million children, giving them pre-school education in 2011 from the 1,914,137 children accommodated in public pre-schools in 2010.

“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 (EFA) commitment,” said Education Secretary Armin Luistro in a press statement.

In line with this, the department is set to undertake a ground mapping of all school-aged children by way of pre-registration all over the country starting 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,” added Luistro.

Among the steps involved to achieve its target increase, the department intends to add more preschool teachers. Currently, there are 29,615 preschool teachers in the country. From that number, only 2,299 teachers hold permanent items and the rest are on contract of service status.

This year DepEd targets to open more than 700 permanent teaching positions and accommodate more than 10,000 teachers through contract of service. –Rainier Allan Ronda (The Philippine Star)