BEAM Newsletter

The BEAM Access XI Experience: Unlearning Biases, Upgrading Capabilities

While many elementary, secondary and tertiary students will be graduating from formal school this season)[1], it is sad to note that (according to DepEd) 11.6 million of us Filipinos have never even been able to go to formal school[2].  They are reportedly either found in the hinterlands or in the streets working in high-risk and low-paying jobs. Reaching these unschooled Filipinos is one of the bigger critical issues and challenges confronting the agency today.

Furthermore, even for those children who were able to enter school, Grade 1 readiness rate is only 35% despite having undergone pre-school in private or public schools.

BEAM-Access - through its sub-components Increasing Access, Institute for the Indigenous Peoples’ Education (IIPE) and Distance Learning Program (DLP) - programs that have helped improve the quality of and access to basic education and make the Early Childhood and Basic Education Curriculum of DepEd more relevant to indigenous children.

Multi-stakeholdership

In a forum on good practices organized by the BEAM-Access XI held last February 6-7, 2008 at the Garden Oases in Davao City, one of the highlights were positive feedbacks from DepEd, LGU and participants from other agencies on how Access had indeed helped provide more opportunities for education through its service providers. However, the participants turned a bit weary with the reality that BEAM will be ending soon and the great responsibility of sustaining these projects will be on DepEd, the local governments and other partners. The service providers altogether appeased their concern saying that although their contracts had ended with BEAM, their passion and commitment for helping the communities is still alive and that they will be (and some are still currently) working for more development projects together with DepEd and other local partners in their areas of Davao del Sur, Davao del Norte, Compostela Valley, Davao City, Digos City, Davao Oriental, and other divisions.

This brought to focus the importance of multi-stakeholdership, one of the identified best practices of the Access project. With the limited capacities of local partners and limited BEAM fund, project implementation would not have been successful if not for the synergy of the stakeholders involved. The sense of ownership, of having to contribute something to the project ensures the commitment of partners. Therefore, this was also identified as the obvious direction in the future for the sustainability of the project sites.

Contributing to BESRA

Included in the Philippine Education for All (Phil. EFA) 2015, plan of Action is the Basic Education Reform Sector Agenda or BESRA. BESRA (2006-2010) is a policy reform package of DepEd which aims to attain and sustain better performance in basic education of public schools through the following Key Reform Thrusts: 1. Get all schools to continuously improve; 2. Enable teachers to further enhance their contribution to learning outcomes; 3. Increase social support to attainment of desired learning outcomes; 4. Improved impact on outcomes from complementary early childhood education, alternative learning systems and private sector participation; and 5. Change institutional culture of DepEd to better support these key reform thrusts.

During the Access RXI forum, Regional Director and BEAM Philippine Project Manager  Susana Teresa B. Estigoy gave a presentation on BESRA, specially focusing on KRT 4 (Improved impact on outcomes from complementary early childhood education, alternative learning systems and private sector participation) as well as progress, gaps and disparities in attaining EFA (Education for All) goals. Aside from the Service Providers and members of the community, the participants included Ms. Emelita Salvado, Chief of the Elementary Education Department RXI; Dr. Luzminda Onor, Chief of the Secondary Education Department RXI; Ms. Cristina Tabalina, representing Ms. Erlinda Kadon the ALS Regional Chief; Dr. Rebecca Torres, Regional Pre-school coordinator; BEAM Deputy Philippine Project Manager Ms. Alma Castillo; BEAM Access Community Development Adviser Mr. Ramon C. Bobier; BEAM Australian Project Director Dr. Ian D’Arcy Walsh; and Monitoring and Evaluation Adviser Mr. Peter Klar. Present as well were: the Schools Division Superintendents of Davao del Sur, Davao City, and Davao Oriental; ALS Division Supervisors; DLP and IP coordinators of the different divisions; LGU representatives of Digos, Davao City and others; and other government agencies like DSWD, MEDCo, and NCIP who are members of RPACA.

In effect, two workshops focusing on BESRA KRT 4 were held facilitated by BEAM-Access Programs Coordinator for Region XI Ms. Rosemarie D. Yngente and Access Programs Training Coordinator Supervisor Mr. Jenielito Atillo, ES1 where: 1.) Participants were divided into groups by division and planned for the future directions; and, 2.) Participants were divided by major groups e.g. Pre-school education, IP education, Alternative Learning Systems and Service Providers to make their action plans. The reports were presented to the body for comments, suggestions and consolidation of efforts.

Good Practices and Ways Forward

In the consolidated Good Practices of RXI Service Providers presented by Ms. Donna Celebrado, MDE during the Access RXI Forum, five major good practices were highlighted:

1)    Partnerships with DepEd - emphasizing on having regular and consistent coordination with the region, division and district offices, having venues for discussing project developments, lessons learned and future plans, and celebrating national events as venues for coordinative relationship and support;

2)    Curriculum and materials development - having developed a culturally-responsive curriculum and indigenized materials;

3)    Capacity building for partners-Teachers/Instructional Managers and for parents and community leaders;

4)    Development and integration of other support services to partner communities - which included formation of teachers and student volunteers (in the case of Cor Jesu and San Pedro College), and integration of other community support services (health services in the case of Institute of Primary Health Care, Cor Jesu and SPC and capability building activities like Community Organizing and other inputs or youth leadership trainings in the case of Silingang Dapit sa Sidlakang Mindanao (SILDAP-SE) and the rest of the Service Providers; and

5)    Mechanisms for project sustainability-such as signing of Memorandum of Agreement for Provincial LGU, Municipal LGU, Barangay LGU, Municipal Social Welfare and Development, local DepEd, and other partners, securing a deed of donation for the project site, development of community products and monitoring.

In the identified ways forward, aside from continued partnership support, mobilization and capacity building; advocacy; project sustainability measures as well as strengthening of Community Learning Centers; the need to explore the concept of “Development Education” was emphasized by Ms. Celebrado which includes questioning one’s own work, reflecting on values and principles, conceptual framework and methodology, the need for quality training in Development Education, among others. 

In the forefront of BEAM-Access programs are the service providers, who, in bringing the project closer to the communities and empowering them, had their own significant learning to share. In the service providers’ meeting conducted before the Access RXI Forum, they reflected together how each had developed and improved as development workers. A prevalent insight was that all of them had biases against working with government agencies before. They were hesitant at the start, but have now regained their faith in especially with DepEd.

They have also discovered their own specialties like Glenda Delideli, Project Manager of SILDAP-SE with her ability to deeply capture stories on culture, dynamics, and harnessing the specialties of the communities. The value of resiliency for Edith Aro, who almost gave up on some instances due to dynamics among partners but held her ground because of her firm commitment. San Pedro College tapped their institutional strength on health to complement the Access programs and learning more development skills with their involvement. Cor Jesu College synergized its entire management, faculty, staff and students in sharing their skills and resources and for Lungga and MinPhil together with the rest – for having learned through the project various learning approaches in education.

With these capabilities and firm commitment, DepEd already has sure partners in continuing to address the need to reach our “11. 6 million unschooled Filipinos.”  With the help of other local stakeholders, and bringing all these efforts to a national level through BESRA, “Education for all,” will no longer be a distant thought after all.

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 1 Article by James Constantin Galvez, March 12, 2008 covering the speech of DepEd Sec. Jesli Lapus.

2 Speech of Former Pres. Ramos during the testimonial dinner at U.P. Mindanao last February 22, 2008.