LGU

2010 National Literacy Conference and Awards

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The Literacy Coordinating Council recently held its National Literacy Conference and Awards in Baguio Teachers Camp in Baguio City, September 8-11, 2010. The Conference and Awards, with the theme “Community Development: A Shared Responsibility to Society through Functional Literacy,” was participated in by local government units officials, DepEd Alternative Learning System officials and teachers, non-government organizations representatives, Council representatives and technical advisory and working groups, and literacy stakeholders and advocates from all over the Philippines. Around 615 registered participants filled Benitez Hall of the Camp, excluding the LCC Secretariat and working committees and National Literacy Awards  Winners.(participants) Honored guests and speakers to the Conference included DepEd Undersecretary Rizalino Rivera who gave the opening remarks, and SEAMEO INNOTECH director Ramon C. Bacani, among others. 

There were two plenary sessions and a panel discussion with topics International Conference on Adult Education VI: The Belem Framework of Action, The Role of Radio in Reaching Out to Communities towards Literacy and Development, and Social Responsibility for Community Development, respectively.Aside from the talks shared by the speakers, two more highlights of the Conference were the launching of the LCC theme song titled “Functional Literacy, My Right and My Duty,” composed and arranged by Lourdes R. Quisumbing, Ph.D., president of the UNESCO Asia Pacific Network for International Education and Values Education Phil. and former Secretary of the Department of Education; and the awarding of winners to the National Literacy Awards Outstanding Local Government Units and Literacy Programs, and special recognition to literacy programs and implementers. (2010 NLA winners)

Undersecretary Rivera delivered the closing message, reiterating that through partnership and by helping one another, we can achieve our goal of a literate citizenry.

Powerpoint presentations of the speakers:

  • CONFINTEA VI: The Belem Framework of Action
  • The Role of Radio in Reaching Out to Communities towards Literacy and Development

1.  Why Advocacy on Functional Literacy 
2.  An Advocacy Radio Program on Functional Literacy

  • Social Responsibility for Community Development
  • Basic Education Sector Reform Agenda (BESRA)
  • Enabling Communities Through Functional Literacy

A Primer on Analysis of the 2003 Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS)

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The Study was initiated by LCC with the main objective of providing an in-depth analysis of the 2003 Functional Literacy Education and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS) results and generating information useful for the Council’s functions. It includes comparative analysis of the FLEMMS conducted in 1989 and 1994 to assess the country’s progress in literacy.

Dissemination Forum: Results of the 2008 Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS)

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The Literacy Coordinating Council will hold a Dissemination Forum on the  “State of Functional Literacy of Filipinos: Results of the 2008 Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey” on March 2, 2011; 9:00 a.m. at the Pearl Hall of SEAMEO INNOTECH, Quezon City. The forum aims to inform education stakeholders on the literacy situation of Filipinos based on the results of the survey.

 

Conducted every five years by the National Statistics Office, the Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS) is a national survey that gathers  information on the basic and functional literacy status of the population; their educational skills; qualifications; and exposure to mass media.

The results of the 2008 FLEMMS spell out literacy achievement that will help provide a clear picture of the scope of the country’s illiteracy problem, which is the focus of the forum. The forum will provide a platform for consolidating actions based on the results;  determine the policy and program implications of the results; and recommend possible courses of action to improve the literacy situation of the country.

The three previous rounds were conducted in 1989, 1994 and 2003.

The participants of the forum are national government agencies; non-government agencies; local government units; leagues of provinces, cities, municipalities, and barangays; state colleges and universities; private organizations; and civil societies.

Development of Five-Year Action Plan for the Implementation of Belem Framework

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The Literacy Coordinating Council hold the 2nd Workshop on the Development of Five-Year Action Plan for the implementation of Belem Framework on July 22, 2011 at Bulwagan ng Karunungan, Rizal Building I, DepEd Central Office, DepEd Complex, Meralco Avenue, Pasig City.

The Belém Framework for Action, the final document of the Sixth International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA VI), was adopted on 4 December 2009 by UNESCO Member states. Philippines is one of the signatories to this International Treaty having recognized the fundamental role of adult learning and education.

The country believes that adults need to develop their abilities, enrich their knowledge, and improve their technical or professional qualifications or turn them in a new direction to meet their own needs and those of their society. Literacy is the most significant foundation upon which to build comprehensive, inclusive and integrated lifelong and life-wide learning for all young people and adults.

Given the magnitude of the global literacy challenge, the LCC deemed it vital to develop a national Adult Literacy Roadmap and/or a Plan of Action to support Adult Education and Lifelong Learning and to ensure that adult literacy rates are improved by all means possible by 2015.

LCC aimed to reconvene government agencies involved in adult education to:

  1. Gather think-tanks from the government agencies, non-government organizations, LCC members and partners involved in the education of young people and adults enables individuals, especially women, to draft concrete Plans of Action for 2011 to 2015 pursuant to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Education for All (EFA) and the UN agenda for sustainable human, social, economic, cultural and environmental development, including gender equality (CEDAW and the Beijing Platform for Action).
  2. Engage stakeholders in developing the Five-Year Philippine Plan of Policies and Action agenda aligned with the Belém Framework. The ideas and possible action points were generated during the first meeting and will be turned over to the Secretary of Education for presentation in several UNESCO forum and Board Meetings to be convened for this purpose.
  3. Finalize the LCC Adult Literacy and Lifelong Education Road Map with clear goals and deadlines to meet this challenge based on the critical assessments of progress made, obstacles encountered and weaknesses identified will be the final output of the workshop.

Exchange Visit to the Philippines

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Officials of the Ministry of Education (MoE) of Nepal met with the head of the Literacy Coordinating Council Secretariat (LCC) in their visit to the Philippines recently. The visit is in line with Nepal MoE’s School Sector Reform Plan 2009-2015 which aims to improve equity and access, quality and relevance, and effeciency and effectiveness of education focusing at the school and community levels.

The Nepal Education Ministry officials were particularly interested to learn  how the Philippines has implemented decentralization in education, capacity development at the local level, and planning and resource mobilization at school and community levels.

After giving a short background about LCC as a policy-making body on literacy endeavors, its secretariat head Dr. Norma Salcedo acquainted the officials on the various literacy programs the LCC assists and some strategies the Council employs to enhance  literacy advocacy nationwide. She also gave information on the literacy rate of Filipinos, including other literacy programs the government promotes to improve the quality of education in the country that would eventually gain benefit for the Filipinos – children.youth, and adults alike.

The exchange, though short, proved meaningful to Nepal MoE officials. As they believe regional and international experience on educational reform provides immense opportunity for their country to learn from different sources and to adopt strategies in the course of their reform initiatives, they consider the Philippines as one that has a wide range of lessons and best examples in education reform initiaitves which could be instrumental for their senior management to learn from.

The Nepal Education Ministry delegates also met with other officials of the Department of Education including the Bureau of Secondary Education, National Educational Testing and Research Center, and Teacher Education Council.

By Analiza S. Dy
May 27, 2010

LCC Convenes 2010 NLA BOJs

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The Literacy Coordinating Council (LCC)  convened the Board of Judges (BOJs) for this year’s National Literacy Awards (NLA) last May 24, 2010 to acquaint the judges on the revised criteria and guidelines for selection of literacy programs, terms of reference of BOJs and Coordinators, and guidelines on the conduct of ocular visits; and to distribute to the respective judges the documents submitted by the local government units (lgu) for review.

The composition of the judges include members of the LCC technical working group and representatives from government agencies and civic organizatiions. Three judges are assigned in each of the five categories: Outstanding Literacy Program and Outstanding Local Government Units – Independent Component and Component City, Highly Urbanized City, Municipal Level Class A, and Municipal Level Class B.

The initial part of the selection process is the review of the documents  submitted by each  lgu, from which the top five nominees shall be chosen. Verification of the top five nominees’ literacy programs follows through ocular visit and on-site validation by the BOJs and LCC-NLA Coordinators. The ranking of winners in every category shall be presented to the Council prior to the Awards.

Winners will be  announced during the National Literacy Awards and Conference to be held on the second week of September, coinciding with the celebration of National Literacy Week. They will receive prizes which include plaques of recognition and cash.

Literacy at Work at SIL

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Literacy continues to be a part of the work of the Summer Institute of Linguistics internationally and in the Philippines. SIL is pleased to be involved in literacy activities which touch the lives of adults, young people and children. Although the Philippines has a basic literacy rate of more than 88.5%, pockets of illiteracy remain. According to the Department of Education, there are more than one million pre-literates in the country and more than six million people are deemed to be functionally illiterate. Many of these are found among the indigenous cultural communities where SIL works in association with the Philippines Department of Education.

The languages spoken by a number of these communities have had no written tradition. Initial work involves linguistic research which leads to the development of an appropriate orthography for the language – an alphabet which is easily read and affords the student opportunity to use the skills they have learned in reading in the vernacular to transition to reading in other Philippine languages. SIL endeavors to serve these communities through literacy education – tailoring such education to the felt needs of the people using a learner centered, bottom-up approach. Our desire is that, beginning from initial literacy, the learner will develop a desire to maintain their reading and writing skills and that these will provide the basis for continuing education, benefiting the individual, the community in which he lives, and his nation. Learning is a lifelong process and some of the basic tools are reading, writing, and numeracy.

  • MALEI (Matigsalug Literacy Education Incorporated) oversees the on-going development of literacy and education among the Matigsalug Manobo of Davao del Norte and Bukidnon. SIL members helped facilitate the formation of this people’s organization. MALEI aims to include community education as part of their on-going programs for out-of-school youth and adults. Typically, this would include sessions on topics such as budgeting, leadership training and agricultural matters.
  • Under the umbrella of OMALRACDI (Obo Manobo Active Language Resource and Community Development Inc.), various activities take place in partnership with SIL. These include the promotion of literacy through equipping Manobos to become literacy teachers and supervisors. To date, more than eight Literacy Teacher Institutes have been held in Manobo communities, taught by Manobos. OMALRACDI also facilitates health care education programs through primary health care classes taught by a Manobo midwife.
  • Among the Tagakaulo Kalagan speakers of Sarangani Province and Davao del Sur in association with the Department of Education Bureaus of Elementary Education and Alternative Learning Systems. Beginning in the barangay of Lutay, an area which formerly has had neither formal school for children nor non-formal classes for adults, a program for children has begun where basic reading and writing lesson materials are constructed first in the mother tongue of the students, bridging into Filipino and English. SIL members are very active in this area and the program is spreading to a number of Tagakaulo speaking areas.

Source: SIL Philippines

UNESCO Call for Nominations

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Officials of the Ministry of Education (MoE) of Nepal met with the head of the Literacy Coordinating Council Secretariat (LCC) in their visit to the Philippines recently. The visit is in line with Nepal MoE’s School Sector Reform Plan 2009-2015 which aims to improve equity and access, quality and relevance, and effeciency and effectiveness of education focusing at the school and community levels.

The Nepal Education Ministry officials were particularly interested to learn  how the Philippines has implemented decentralization in education, capacity development at the local level, and planning and resource mobilization at school and community levels.

After giving a short background about LCC as a policy-making body on literacy endeavors, its secretariat head Dr. Norma Salcedo acquainted the officials on the various literacy programs the LCC assists and some strategies the Council employs to enhance  literacy advocacy nationwide. She also gave information on the literacy rate of Filipinos, including other literacy programs the government promotes to improve the quality of education in the country that would eventually gain benefit for the Filipinos – children.youth, and adults alike.

The exchange, though short, proved meaningful to Nepal MoE officials. As they believe regional and international experience on educational reform provides immense opportunity for their country to learn from different sources and to adopt strategies in the course of their reform initiatives, they consider the Philippines as one that has a wide range of lessons and best examples in education reform initiaitves which could be instrumental for their senior management to learn from.

The Nepal Education Ministry delegates also met with other officials of the Department of Education including the Bureau of Secondary Education, National Educational Testing and Research Center, and Teacher Education Council.

By Analiza S. Dy
May 27, 2010

Understanding the Vital Years for Future Learning

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“We all need to work together to unlock the powers of the vital years from 0 to 6. Waiting for our young children to come to school for Grade One at the age of six may be too late!” These were the words of Secretary Teresa Aquino-Oreta, chair of the Philippines Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) Council during a policy forum involving education ministers of Southeast Asia late in January this year.

The forum, dubbed “Understanding the Vital Years for Future Learning,” served as an eye-opener in the ever growing need to strengthen policies concerning early childhood education. Conducted during the 45th SEAMEO Council Conference in Cebu, Philippines, the forum zeroed in on the importance of tapping the learning potentials of children in their early years. Likewise, it sought to get commitments from education officials to put premium on their ECCD programs, which receive less than 10% of budget allocation in many countries as studies revealed.

Among those present during the forum were Ministers of Education of SEAMEO member countries, as well as education officials and representatives from SEAMEO associate member countries Australia, Spain, and New Zealand.

Secretary Aquino-Oreta, in her paper, recounted the Philippines’ experiences in adopting ECCD as a national priority. She said the country had a “long journey” towards this direction as efforts to promote children’s welfare and enhance their opportunities began as early as 1974 with the passage of the Child and Youth Welfare Code. The Code led to the creation of the Council for the Welfare of Children (CWC) whose mandate was later transferred to the Department of Social Welfare.

In 2009, the CWC was transformed into the Early Childhood Care and Development Council through Executive Order No. 778. The ECCD Council is now mandated to “support the implementation of the full range of health, nutrition, early education, and social services programs that provide for the basic holistic needs of young children from birth to age six and to promote their optimum growth and development.”

In the past decades, many ECCD laws and executive orders were promulgated. However, implementing such laws became a challenge; and this was mainly due to lack of available information, if not for the often inaccurate, dated, and limited data that offer little value. The ECCD Council immediately worked on creating a database that will serve as guide for a more efficient and effective implementation of the national policies on ECCD. Aside from this, the Council is also working with ECCD professionals and experts to design a learning framework for early education programs.

The stories shared by Secretary Aquino-Oreta and best practices presented by Dr. Claire McLachan, Associate Professor of Early Years Education in Massey University, New Zealand, served as springboards for discussion on the topic.

The Education Ministers agreed to pursue several courses of action, including the conduct of a regional policy research on ECCD. The Philippine Department of Education, as a proponent of the discussion, committed an initial funding of US$50,000 for the said project.

Source: SEAMEO INNOTECH, January 2010

Why Literacy is Important

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Can you read this? Can you count how many letters are there in the first question? Can you write down your answer? If you can, good for you! You have what it would take to live a good life, and contribute to the wealth of the nation.

Literacy: a matter of life and death Literacy is life, as it is the set of skills necessary for existence and development.

Living and earning

Marina’s illiterate parents used to live a hand-to-mouth existence, roaming the mountains and often being mistreated by lowlanders. Determined to change their fate, Marina decided to learn. With the competencies she posses, she started to earn a living that affords to give her family a decent life.

Developing potentials

Fourteen year-old Maricel just learned to write her name at the community learning center in far-flung sitio in Digos City. Now that she knows how to write her name and things about health and nutrition, she has made one step closer to becoming a nurse. Making informed decisions
Indigenous people of Mindoro lamented that when they were still illiterate, they used to be quiet and aloof people. But after being provided literacy, they were empowered to organize themselves, make critical decisions on matters that affect their lives and participate in the democratic process such as election.

Contributing to society

Illiterate mothers of a remote barangay in Cotabato used spend their day gambling, gossiping and nagging their husbands. Then an NGO that brought literacy transformed them into responsible mothers and wives, earning family members and valued part of the community.

Averting death

On the other side of possessing these range of skills and competencies that lead to quality life for individual and society, is the dark side of illiteracy.

Illiteracy is death…literally, as in the father who accidentally poisoned his child because he could not read label that said toxic; or figuratively, as in throwing a good life away as a housemaid committed a crime out of ignorance thereby spending the better years of her life in prison.

Those were just newsworthy incidents involving illiteracy. Unfortunately, illiteracy is not just a form of bad luck befalling people randomly, it is a reality for 4 million Filipinos who cannot read and write. Tsk, tragic cases of illiteracy might just be a common occurrence, and tragedies could multiply by 4 million!

Literacy is the key towards a good life…and against meaningless and tragic death. Good for those who knows this truth… and better for those who act on this knowledge and multiply the values of literacy in theirs and others’ lives.