Youth and Education

Photo essay

Refugees forgotten in Mindanao fighting

by Nonoy Espina

It has been almost a year since fighting broke out between government forces and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front after the Supreme Court struck down the Memorandum Agreement on Ancestral Domain. While the story of the continued fighting still makes headlines, the story of the refugees who fled the fighting has been dropped from the frontpages and the line-ups of the major newscasts.

Read more... | Posted Monday, July 6th, 2009

A school board makeover

by Alecks P. Pabico

NAGA CITY’S successes in its poverty alleviation efforts no doubt allowed it to focus its resources on improving access to basic services like education. But all its education reform efforts could not have been possible without its reinvention of the local school board.

The transformation began in 2001, when the MDGs were largely unheard of and a national government directive for the goals to be localized and included in development planning processes was yet forthcoming. But Naga’s decision then to revamp the school board’s orientation and organizational structure later put the city in a better position to address the gaps in achieving the MDG targets in education.

Read more... | Posted Friday, May 30th, 2008

Naga City’s class act

by Alecks P. Pabico

NAGA CITY, CAMARINES SUR — If one were to put local governments in a classroom setting, the executive body of this thriving city southwest of Metro Manila would be the overachieving nerd, the one guaranteed to garner the most medals at the end of each term.

So when Naga City received a failing grade in one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — achieving universal primary education — local officials characteristically lost no time in dreaming up a program aimed at improving its score. It’s a situation made even more challenging by the city’s demographics: one out of every three Nagueño is of school age. But as Naga City Mayor Jesse Robredo put it, “We need to address the continuing inability of our school system to ensure that no child is left behind.”

Read more... | Posted Friday, May 30th, 2008

An island slakes its thirst

by Edwin General

KAHIKUKUK, BANGUIGUI, SULU — Asaali Muhalli is no ancient mariner, but there was a time when his lament was practically an echo of that of the protagonist in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem: “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.”

Read more... | Posted Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

Ghost teachers,’ phantom schools haunt education reforms in ARMM

by Jaileen F. Jimeno

LAWYER FRANCES Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi talks to distraught “dead” teachers all the time, but she makes it a point to crack jokes when they call her on her cell phone at night.

“I appeal to them, please don’t call me at night,” she says. “I’m afraid of you, you’re already dead.”

Guiani-Sayadi is the Solicitor General of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). She has been given the horrendous task of putting order to the chaotic records of teaching personnel in the ARMM.

Read more... | Posted Friday, May 16th, 2008

Las Piñas pushes school reforms despite lack of funds, teachers

by Karol Anne M. Ilagan

Second of three parts
LAS PIÑAS CITY — When the latest results of the National Achievement Test (NAT) for Grade 6 students came out in June 2007, this southern Metro Manila city got the fourth highest score in the National Capital Region (NCR), adding yet another item in Las Piñas’s growing list of achievements.

Three-part PCIJ report [...]

Read more... | Posted Thursday, May 15th, 2008
Millennium Development Goals

Maguindanao, RP fall behind key indicators for education

by Jaileen F. Jimeno

A TOWN IN MAGUINDANAO — Ten-year-old Dino and two younger boys were harassing a hapless chicken under a neighbor’s nipa house. Covered with dust, the boys obviously hadn’t had a bath just yet that day, and had chosen to go after the chicken while other children in this village trooped to a nearby river to soak and to play.

It looked like a typical village scene — only that it was the middle of a school day and Dino (not his real name) and many of the children should have been in class. But the classrooms in Dino’s school were shuttered because its four teachers were attending a meeting in the capital.

Read more... | Posted Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

Whither the MDGs?

by Leonor Magtolis Briones

For the last several months we have been swimming in an alphabet soup of acronyms — NBN, ZTE, NEDA, FG, FGI, to name a few. And more keep pouring in; these days, the most oft-repeated one is NFA, or the National Food Authority. Yet what we should have been repeating like a mantra is MDG and its plural form, which stands for Millennium Development Goals. In 2000, the Philippines became one of the signatories to the Millennium Declaration, thereby sealing its commitment to meeting by 2015 eight goals that address development concerns worldwide. Last year marked the midpoint in the period allotted to the achievement of these MDGs.

Read more... | Posted Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
Video

The season of protest songs

by Jaileen F. Jimeno

“BAYAN KO” is in vogue again, being sung by demonstrators on both sides of the political fence.

Out of the current political turmoil, the positive thing singer-songwriter Noel Cabangon expects is a healthier harvest of patriotic song. He says composers often become profound and prolific during these times.

Read more... | Posted Friday, March 14th, 2008

I am woe, man

by Alecks P. Pabico

I HAVE three things in common with former president and certified macho man Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada: the same birthday, facial hair, and the constant presence of women. But while he may believe being constantly around women is a good thing and could be a much needed boost to one’s masculinity, it’s a situation I have ambivalent feelings about.

Read more... | Posted Friday, September 7th, 2007

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