OurHappySchool

GOOD EDUCATION is not only about physical inputs, such as classrooms, teachers, and textbooks, but also about incentives that lead to better instruction and learning.

Education systems are extremely demanding of the managerial, technical, and financial capacity of governments, and, thus, as a service, education is too complex to be efficiently produced and distributed in a centralized fashion. Thus, the government adopts this innovation to decentralize the authority to the school level. Responsibility and decision-making over school operations is transferred to principals, teachers, parents, sometimes students, and other school community members. The school-level actors, however, have to conform to, or operate, within a set of centrally determined policies.

IT HAS BEEN OBSERVED that enrolment in many private schools has tremendously gone down due to increasing cost of private education. Many students have been transferring to public schools and this phenomenon has caused worries to school owners. How can private school stay afloat in this kind of environment without sacrificing quality?

On Philippine Education: The Basic Education School Reform Agenda (BESRA)

BASIC EDUCATION SECTOR REFORM AGENDA (BESRA) is a package of policy reforms that as a whole seeks to systematically improve critical regulatory, institutional, structural, financial, cultural, physical and informational conditions affecting basic education provision, access and delivery on the ground. It aims to create a basic education sector that is capable of attaining the country’s Education for All Objectives by the year 2015.

In summary, its objectives are:

1. Universal Adult Functional Literacy;

2. Universal School Participation and Elimination of Drop-outs and Repetition in First Three Grades;

3. Universal Completion of the Full Cycle of Basic Education Schooling with Satisfactory Achievement Levels by All At Every Grade or Year; and

4. Total Community Commitment to Attainment of Basic Education Competencies for All.

In order for the basic education sector to achieve the above listed desired educational outcomes for all Filipinos, the BESRA focuses on specific policy actions within five key reform thrusts (KRT) as follows:

1. Clear School Mission

There is a clearly articulated school mission through which the staff shares an understanding of and commitment to instructional goals, priorities, assessment procedures and accountability. Staff accept responsibility for students' learning of the school's essential curricular goals.

THE MAIN CRITIC of the sex education is the Catholic Church. Its concern focuses mainly on the supposed antagonizing ideas of sex education with the teachings provided in the Scriptures such as sexual abstinence, monogamy and chastity. It is also alleged that sex education encourages promiscuity among young adolescents. Further, conservative critics say that, “Sex education does not provide appropriate moral context for sex and has failed in ‘reinforcing the traditional Christian ethic reserving sex for marriage’”.

 THE 12-YEAR EDUCATION Cycle will just definitely and heavily add to the burden of Filipino families, majority of which belongs to the poor. Moreover, this will further exploit our teachers to more work loads and less and less pay in real value.

THE PURPOSE OF THE SO-CALLED customer-driven educational organization/institution is to be fully committed in satisfying and anticipating the needs of the students, who are the customers. More than a marketing strategy, this innovative educational philosophy treats the students as partners in developing and delivering quality and pragmatic education (which, in economic jargon, is the product or service offered by an enterprise).

TECHNOLOGY HAS, INDEED, changed the complexion of education in the last ten years. As transmission of information or knowledge is an essential aspect of education, the invention of computer and internet technology, for instance, has made teaching and imparting knowledge somehow easier and more efficient.

            In the basic and higher education alike, computer technology has been bringing about modern and creative approaches in conveying knowledge. Elementary students today can find learning as entertainment through Video Presentations via DVD technology, projector, etc. Students in all levels can now consider studying to be fun through technologies such as Interactive Whiteboards, Proximas, PowerPoint games, interactive DVDs, and other softwares. Internet sites like Wikipedia, Microsoft Encarta on-line, and various academic blog sites—through which viewers can easily find information about almost anything—had become comfortably accessible to teachers and students alike. (It is with this easy access to huge blocks of information that the popular motto, “one-click-away” emerged.)

RUSTY SANCHEZ Jr., the contributor, was once the Editor in Chief of San Beda College (Mendiola). Currently working as Operation Manager of Guaranteed Marketing Services, Inc., he still believes that a drop of ink makes millions think. (You, too, can have your articles published here. Send them through e-mail to OurHappySchool@yahoo.com)

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