Ford Foundation funds Bulacan’s Project Josie

Every day seems like an election campaign in the province of Bulacan.

The face of Bulacan Governor Josefina dela Cruz adorns the many walls of school buildings and public places. Public school administrators use her nickname, Josie, as a rallying cry.

Yet Josie is not just the latest leader to catch the imagination of Bulakeno voters. It is also the acronym of an ambitious, one-of-a-kind reform in public school education in the country: the Joint Systems Improvement in Education Project (Project JOSIE).

And to "outsiders" like former Finance Undersecretary Milwida Guevara, the sea of enthusiasm sweeping Bulakeno teachers, parents and students towards Project JOSIE justifies the almost Hello Kitty popularity of the Governor.

"When I visited the place, they recognized me as a fellow JOSIE member. That’s how they have strongly bonded with the project," says Guevara, program officer for The Ford Foundation which extended a $300,000 grant to the project.

Getting members to identify with the project is key to Project JOSIE’s success. Before it was launched in May 2001, the provincial government first held an "Educational Congress" for students, parents, teachers, and school administrators.

Through the conference, the province realized that the quality of basic education in Bulacan has suffered over the years despite the fact that their literacy rate is 98.5 percent. The poor academic performance of students resulted from the lack of training for teachers, an acute shortage of instructional materials, and the inadequacy of classrooms and teachers.

Like in most parts of the country, Bulacan has only one teacher per class of 50 pupils. Some schools in Sapangpalay have up to 110 pupils per teacher, while others in Del Monte have to institute three-hour shifts extending up to 8 p.m. to accommodate the number of students.

The provincial government also found out that textbooks issued by the Department of Education Culture and Sports get easily worn out and are intentionally not being re-used because of corruption. This jacks up the cost of producing student textbooks and limits the supply.

These were some of the reasons why graduates of Bulacan elementary schools scored a measly 18.23 percent in English and 21.72 percent in Math in the National Elementary Achievement Test (NEAT) conducted for school year 1998-1999. This meant less than a quarter of its grade six pupils had passed the test.

Gov. dela Cruz, herself a daughter of a former public school teacher and a multi-awardee in local governance, was first to raise the red flag on the dismal NEAT performance of Bulakeno students in Math and English.

"We realized that unless we do something about it, we will just end up wasting our time and precious resources educating our citizenry," she says.

Reform process

It took eight months since the Educational Congress for school administrators to package the project. The provincial government created a project management team and set aside an annual budget of P6 million for a six-year project that would improve the academic performance of public elementary and high schools in Bulacan. Every district committed a portion of their special education fund, which comprises a percentage of the real estate taxes they collect.

Bulacan being a consistent recipient of the Galing Pook awards, a program of The Ford Foundation that recognizes the best local governments in the country, it did not take much convincing for the New York-based institution to extend a $300,000 grant to Project JOSIE.

Initially, 26 teachers were trained under the project at the Philippine Normal University, and then 250 were taught how to train other teachers. The training was "echoed" or "cascaded" during the summer break and has so far improved the skills of a total of 874 teachers in four districts in the province. The target is to upgrade the competence of 1,090 grade one teachers in reading and Math.

In a survey conducted by Bulacan teachers, project proponents found out that grade one pupils who do not have pre-school education are lagging behind their classmates who had taken kindergarten. To augment their learning, teachers have volunteered to conduct tutorials in Math and English. While they don’t get paid for the extra work, teachers report diligently on Saturdays to accommodate the students.

Parental guidance

Wilma Dionisio, 42, president of the Parents-Teachers Association (PTA) at the Barasoain Memorial Elementary School in Malolos no longer just wait for her children to come home from school.

Dionisio is part of a Parent Learning Support System (PLSS) under Project JOSIE where a network of parents regularly read to their children.

"Children with parental support perform better in school," Dionisio says. She says parents’ roles in their children’s educational needs have grown especially now that public school teachers cannot cope with the number of students in a class.

Thus a typical sight in Bulacan is a parent acting as a teacher aide inside a public elementary school classroom, or a group of mothers in a huddle over a school project while their children are attending classes.

The concept of a PLSS is actually "nothing new" to Bulacan; Project JOSIE just institutionalized it, says Gov. dela Cruz. In fact, 10 public schools in Hagonoy, Bulacan had been ranked in the NEATís top 100 high-performing schools nationwide due to the PLSS, she adds.

"Parents are not just there to raise funds for the PTA. They are their children’s biggest cheerleaders," Gov. dela Cruz says.

Project JOSIE has also transformed teachers into "instructional managers" from the traditional role of classroom teaching. A school principal in Bulacan now has to serve as a "systems manager" in charge of networking for resources.

Scarcity in books

Probably one of the biggest early accomplishments of Project JOSIE is augmenting the number of textbooks available for students. Instead of knocking on Education Secretary Raul Roco’s doors for more budget, school administrators planned and produced their own textbooks based on Dept. Ed curriculum requirements.

As all of those who contributed to the work were volunteers (even the students who did the art work), the textbooks were made at cheaper cost and became more widely available.

"Bulacan showed it only needs P16 to have a book that used to cost P100 each to publish," says Ford’s Guevara.

As a result, nearly half of Bulacan’s 30 districts have now attained the target 1:1 book-per-child ratio – still five years into the life of Project JOSIE.

The province also launched the "Paligsahang Mangalap ng Aklat, Talino ay I-angat", a competition where it awards schools that can retrieve and preserve the highest number of government-issued books every year.

Barely a year since it started, Project JOSIE has already caused the training of 874 public school teachers; the publication of nearly 1,500 teaching materials, close to 60,000 English and Math books for grade one, and a draft manual for parents on their role in their childrenís education; and an increase in the number of Dept. Ed-issued books that had been retrieved.

Taking the reform a step further, Project JOSIE is now exploring alternative ways of constructing more classrooms and not being at the mercy of the National Government or their congressman’s pork barrel funds. It is now studying a build-operate-transfer scheme to entice the private sector to build the necessary 345 classrooms in the province.

Catalino Rivera, head of the Project JOSIE management team and a former top official of the Center for Higher Education, says the Bulacan experiment should not be "narrowly" looked at as a way to improve the NEAT standings of Bulakenos.

"It is a true modernization of governance, involving all members of the community working towards one goal," he stresses.

With the weight of an entire community’s support behind them, grade one pupils in Bulacan like Digna Amor Campos and Wylmer Ann Dionisio will now find little excuse not passing the NEAT when it will be their turn to finish their sixth grade.