Education

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.

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: