EDITORIAL

Out of 100 grade 1 students, only 14 earn college degrees

It is alarming that for every 100 grade 1 students, only 66 graduate in primary school and only 58 enroll in high school; 43 of them graduate in high school and only 23 pursue a college course. Eventually only 14 of them will graduate.

This is the sad fact that Bureau of Alternative Learning System director Dr. Carolina Guerrero shared when she graced the Regional Literacy Awards program at the Dept. of Education Cordillera regional office in La Trinidad, Benguet last week.

Guerrero said the “Club 86” (86 dropouts) - out of every 100 students is being faced by BALS as a challenge that the number of drop-outs need to be accounted, to achieve DepEd’s goal of “Education for All”.

This is not an easy task for BALS, especially for their mobile teachers, who need to go out to the most remote areas in every municipality, province or region in the country to seek and educate these learners, and also given the fact that BALS will only get less than 1% or roughly P343 M of the P156 billion 2009 budget of DepEd, said Guerrero.

Relative to this, Guerrero called on formal school teachers to look at ALS mobile teachers, as their partners and not as rivals or competition, as there are many things that need to be done and many learners who needed help, for DepEd to achieve a zero dropout.

According to Guerrero, ”it is high time for DepEd to take another look on why there are so many learners who dropout from school, despite the fact that public education is for free. She also believes, “on how much people can get done, as long as they don’t see who gets the credit.”Roughly 30 percent or about 20,000 of the 68,000 ALS learners who took the accreditation and equivalency (A&E) examination February 2008, passed. About 120,000 learners also took the ALS A&E exam last October, hoping to pass it.

ALS A&E examination passers could pursue any college course of their choice, in any college or university, like any normal/formal secondary school graduate, given that they pass the required entrance exam and other basic requirements.

Guerrero said ALS is learner friendly, any interested learners, regardless of how old they are, could enlist or enroll in ALS. They have an option to learn through radio, computer, learning modules or even independently.

Filipino world boxing champion Manny Pacquiao, who did not reach grade 6, is an ALS A&E exam passer and he is now reportedly studying in General Santos Notre Dame College and getting high marks.