DepEd to step up alternative learning system

The Department of Education (DepEd) will aggressively pursue its Alternative Learning System (ALS) program to lure the hundreds of thousands of out-of-school youth into the mainstream education system.

Carolina Guerrero, director of DepEd’s ALS program, said the ALS program will enable out-of-school youths to take equivalency tests that could allow them to apply for technical-vocational courses and even college.

Guerrero said there is a need to absorb the large pool of youths who drop out of elementary and high school due to poverty into the mainstream educational system preferably via the government’s tech-vocational programs.

DepEd statistics show a low percentage of students who enroll in elementary and finish through high school.

"The good thing about alternative learning is that you could study from elementary through college without even entering a classroom," Guerrero said.

When boxing hero Manny Pacquiao endorsed the ALS program, Guerrero said a dramatic increase in interest was created among alternative learners.

Guerrero said Pacquiao, named as DepEd’s "Ambassador for Alternative Learning" after passing the Accreditation and Equivalency test, was the perfect catalyst they needed to create better awareness of the program.

At ALS, Guerrero said, there are no classrooms, but learning groups. There are no boxed subjects but life lessons.

"Classrooms are actually too limiting. At ALS, we give emphasis on functional literacy more than anything else," she added.

Guerrero boasted that the alternative learning system was developed in the Philippines. She disclosed that because of its success factor, ALS was awarded the NOMA Literacy Prize in 2000.

"Educators from all over the world go to us to observe our Alternative Learning System model in the hope of doing the same in their countries," Guerrero said.

The Noma Literacy Prize was created in 1980 by the late Shoichi Noma, president of Kodansha Ltd.

The country’s Bureau of Non-Formal Education, Accreditation and Equivalency (NFE A&E) System was given the Noma award for pioneering the non-formal alternative learning system to formal schooling, the design and elaboration of which has been a collaborative process over many years and utilizing a learning support delivery system, characterized by flexibility in terms of program entry. – Rainier Allan Ronda