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Education Secretary Jesli Lapus wants to put up a
nursery school in each barangay. Here’s why. Among Grade
1 public-school students who’ve attended some sort of
kindergarten or nursery school, only 35 percent are
ready, not just in terms of knowing their ABCs and
writing their names but also in letting go of their
parents and being toilet trained.
Given
his limited budget, however, Jing Lapus is initially
targeting barangay daycare centers in the more depressed
areas of the country. The idea here is to convert these
daycare centers from just feeding and caregiving centers
to educational centers. Crucial to such an approach, of
course, is retraining the social workers assigned to
these centers and maximizing the use of parents as
teacher’s aides.
As
everybody knows, the biggest dropout rates in the
country’s public-school system take place between Grade
1 and Grade 3 even as public- school teachers,
particularly outside Metro Manila and
Cebu, are paid higher than their private-school counterparts.
And no,
DepEd doesn’t have police powers to stop the
proliferation of nursery schools, some of which do not
meet DepEd standards.
Did you
know 1:
The
nursing program of the Development Bank of the
Philippines has so far received 500 applications for its
nursing scholarship program that starts this coming
2008-2009 school year.
Unfortunately, there are only 150 slots available each
year.
Then
again, the requirements are not that tough. One, you
have to be smart and, okay, “well-deserving.” Two, you
have to be very poor.
Did you
know 2:
An
estimated 1,500 Koreans enter the country every month to
take short-term English courses.
Not
surprisingly, Koreans account for 21 percent of all
foreigners who entered the country last year. Of this
total, almost half have visited Cebu and, just like
Metro Manila, have helped push up condo purchases and
home rentals.
Did you
know 3:
Eggplant
is the country’s top-vegetable crop.
In terms
of volume, that’s 20,000 hectares yielding 179,000 tons
annually. In terms of value, that translates to P2
billion every year.
It’s
really not a big bite from its annual P3-billion
research and development budget but the Department of
Science and Technology under Estrella Alabastro has set
aside P167 million over a three-year period for an
innovative program cleverly called PharmaSeas.
For its
part, the University of the Philippines will come up
with a counterpart fund of P28 million and will, of
course, provide the manpower (read: 15 scientists
spearheaded by Gisele Padilla Concepcion of the Marine
Science Institute and five doctors from the Philippine
General Hospital).
Basically, the program will look for antiinfective
agents from sponge-associated marine microorganisms and
antipain agents from toxic-turrid snails. While
exploratory, the program will hopefully help in the
development of cheaper medicine 15 years or so down the
road and in getting an international patent. |
