Christian private schools get international recognition

What better way to welcome the New Year than the good news that local children’s education is getting international attention? The Philippine Christian School of Tomorrow (PCST) secured its position as most admired educational institution when it was conferred Global Model Status by the US-based Accelerated Christian Education (ACE), also known as the School of Tomorrow (SOT).  It is yet another testament that local education is continually evolving and reaching global standards. 

PCST began as a humble six-door apartment building in Alabang, Muntinlupa City, started by a missionary couple, Pastor Delbert and Mrs. Lora Hooge, who introduced the SOT system to the Philippine educational milieu. Starting with kindergarten, the school has expanded to high school. In all levels, PCST’s program provides highly individualized instruction for students, focusing on each child’s uniqueness and individuality. 

Instead of confining their education advancement based only on age, it allows personalized growth, ensuring mastery according to a student’s individual rate of learning. Now, PCST is an expansive 1.6 hectare compound at the heart of Metro Manila within Better Living’s sprawling village. The school is equipped with air-conditioned convention halls and recreation centers. Aside from computer and science laboratories, playground, music and art centers, the school has an oval track, a competition pool, and a sports gymnasium.

“This recognition shows the quality of education we bring to the Philippines,” says Lora Hooge, founder and administrator of PCST, who received the award from ACE recently.

This is the fifth time that the PCST received such an international award, which is conferred on one school per country that uses the ACE curriculum. To date, there are 136 countries worldwide with schools that use the ACE/SOT curriculum. Schools could earn Global Model Status by registering exceptional academic achievement and enabling their students to excel in the pursuit of lifetime careers. 

The average student’s grade in all subject areas was 97.5 percent, said Mrs. Hooge. The school staff motivates  through positive reinforcement, and stimulates students to complete well over one year’s standard academic expectations.

After finishing their high school education,  PCST’s students have studied and made good in major universities in the country including the University of the Philippines (UP), Ateneo, De La Salle, University of Santo Tomas (UST) and DLS-College of St. Benilde.

“We believe that our school’s achievement is attributed in part to community commitment,” Hooge said, highlighting PCST student’s participation in community activities, regional, national, and international competitions, which motivate students to reach their full potentials.  

Using the individualized Bible-based curriculum, PCST focuses on Christian character training and leadership, allowing its students not only to grow in knowledge, but also in integrity — where they treat “every child’s potential as a gift from God that must be handled with care.”

The PCST’s curriculum and other relevant information can be found at www.pcst.org.

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Not all is lost in the areas hit hard by Super Typhoon Yolanda. For example, all land titles kept in the vaults of the province’s Registry of Deeds are intact, according to the Land Registration Authority (LRA).

The problem now is with the landowners who, because of Yolanda, lost the duplicate copies of their land titles. According to Robert Nomar V. Leyretana, CESO II, deputy administrator for operations of LRA, the remedy provided by law for such a situation is judicial petition for the reissuance of a new copy in lieu of the lost one. But given how slow court procedures usually are, such a process would most probably take a lot of time.

The LRA is, therefore proposing that the judicial petition requirement be waived and replaced by a mere administrative proceeding which can be done by the LRA itself. This however, will require an amendment of the law which only Congress can do.

From what I’ve heard, some lawmakers are already talking about this. They are considering either amending the law for good or just suspending the judicial reconstitution requirement in the Yolanda-affected areas. How long our good congressmen can come up with the needed legislative measure is, of course, anybody’s guess. Let’s just hope they see the urgency of the situation.

For its part, the LRA has pledged to do whatever it can to help hasten the reconstitution process. Leyretana assured landowners that as soon as the computer systems of the affected RDs return to full operation (which he estimates will take a month at most), the LRA will begin entertaining regular transactions.

He also emphasized that in case an administrative reconstitution shall have been put in place, the LRA will put in place “safety nets” to ensure that new copies of land titles will be issued only to the real landowners and not to some fake claimants with equally fake documents. He pointed out that this will be easy to do since the original land titles that are filed with the LRA are all intact.

Aside from the hard copies of the original titles, the LRA also has in its database digital or “soft” copies of many of these documents. In the Tacloban RD, for example, where the LRA’s computerization program has been completed, all land titles have digital copies that are safely stored in the authority’s database.

This is not true for all RDs however. Palo’s RD, for instance, still has to wait for its file to be fully digitalized since it is classified under the computerization program’s fourth phase which has yet to be completed. 

Leyretana who was tasked by LRA big boss Eulalio C. Diaz III to visit the Yolanda-hit provinces, reported that the land titles are kept in the vaults of the Registries of Deeds of  Tacloban and Palo in Leyte, Ormoc in Samar, Biliran province.

Even in Tagbilaran City and Bohol Province which was affected by the October 15 earthquake, are titles all intact. Recounting what he saw, Leyretana said that although the LRA office in Palo was totally washed out, for instance, the titles and other documents inside the vault — which he likened to that of a bank — are safe and secure; some may be a bit wet but every title is intact.

As far as land titles are concerned, all is well even in Guiuan, the Eastern Samar town where Yolanda first made landfall, thanks to the simple fact that they are kept in the RD based in Borongan which was spared from the typhoon’s wrath.

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Email: dominitorrevillas@gmailcom