DepEd targets 2.5M kindergarten kids for new school year

Education officials will seek to attract some 2.5 million children to attend kindergarten in all public schools for the coming school year. The Department of Education noted that more than 500,000 school-age children had not been able to go to school in May 2010. "This new year, we are renewing our commitment to reach all children of school age as part of our intensified efforts towards achieving the Education For All (EFA) commitment," Education Secretary Armin Luistro said in an article posted on the government portal. With an increased budget for 2011, the DepEd plans to implement the universal public kindergarten program for 5-year-old children. It said this will give new entrants to basic education the proper preparation on the rigors of schooling.

Also, the DepEd is set to undertake a ground mapping of all school-aged children by way of pre-registration all over the country starting January 15. "The pre-registration will not only allow us to determine the interventions needed to ensure that the EFA commitment is within the department’s reach, but it will also enable us to have a wider reach of children who are deprived of basic education," said Luistro. From the 1,914,137 who were reached in 2010 in both public and private schools, DepEd targets to raise the number of preschool children it will serve to almost 2.5 million or a 21-percent increase in 2011. Among the steps involved to achieve its target increase, the department intends to add more preschool teachers. Currently, there are 29,615 preschool teachers in the country. From that number, only 2,299 teachers hold permanent items and the rest are on contract of service status. In 2011, DepEd targets to open more than 700 permanent teaching positions and accommodate more than 10,000 teachers through contract of service. The DepEd presently has a total of 29,615 preschool classrooms. Meanwhile, in anticipation of an increase in population, the DepEd appealed to donors and other education stakeholders to provide financial support in the construction of more classrooms for kindergarten. "A lot of challenging tasks are ahead of us. We should address all aspects of the essential learning inputs so we can catch up. We know that we cannot hurdle all these alone. We need everyone’s support, specifically the private sector and other community stakeholders, to upgrade the quality of the public school system in our country," said Luistro. — RSJ/KBK, GMANews.TV