DepEd launches Greater Opportunities! Education campaign with PBED, AusAID

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Education (DepEd), with the support of the Philippine Business for Education (PBED) and the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), launched yesterday their Greater Opportunities (GO!) Education campaign to gather more support in its push towards reforming the Philippine basic education system.

Education Secretary Armin Luistro said that the GO! Education campaign assures DepEd of the support of the private sector, and even international agencies, as they implement their ambitious Kindergarten to 12 basic education curriculum (BEC) reform program, and pursue efforts to improve the quality of teachers in public schools, and address the shortage in classrooms and other learning resources in public schools.

The GO! Education campaign will have three “ambassadors” to serve as spokesperson of the three components of the programs led by an Ateneo Bachelor of Science in Biology graduate, Lou Sabrina Ongkiko. Ongkiko took a career as public school teacher at the Culiat Elementary School in Quezon City after earning a Master’s degree in Education from Singapore’s National Institute of Education on a Temasek Foundation scholarship.

The two other GO! Education ambassadors are DepEd Assistant Regional Director Diosdado San Antonio, and Peachie Flaviano, a mother of five public school students.

PBED, it will be recalled, is already helping DepEd in its bid to improve the quality of teachers in public schools through their 1,000 teachers program wherein they provide scholarships to bright public high school children to pursue teacher education in college.

AusAID, it was learned, has provided substantial financial support to the program, by pledging to fund the expansion of the 1,000 teachers by another 1,000 scholarships.

PBED is an organization of the country’s top business tycoons and executives who are advocating for reforms in the country’s basic education so as to enable the country to produce graduates who are highly employable in local and foreign industries.

In 2010, PBED had issued a manifesto of support for DepEd’s then ambitious move to start its K (Kindergarten) to 12 Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) plan which will add two years in the BEC and transform the current six years of elementary and four years of high school to one running from Grades 1 to 12, with an additional two years of “senior high school.”

Ramon del Rosario Jr., a former Finance Secretary during the Ramos administration and now chairman of the Philippine Business for Education (PBED), said that business groups are not only supporting DepEd, but encouraging it also to pursue the “K+12 BEC” program despite criticisms from some sectors.

Del Rosario and top officials of major business groups such as Ed Lacson, president, Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP); Julian Payne, president, Canadian Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines; Alfredo Ayala, chairman, Business Processing Association of the Philippines; Dr. Chito Salazar, PBED president; Ernie Santiago, president, Semiconductor and Electronics Industries of the Philippines; and Edward Ong, chairman, education committee of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Jose Luis Yulo, president, the Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines Foundation were signatories to a memorandum of agreement with Luistro for the PBED support of K to 12 program.