Smart trains volunteers for CommuniTeach

MANILA, Philippines - Leading wireless services provider Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart) has kicked off this year’s CommuniTeach program with a series of trainings for volunteers from partner-schools in key cities all over the country.

In partnership with the Department of Education, universities and local government units (LGUs), Smart is once again rolling out the CommuniTeach program for this school year to complement formal classroom learning. It is one of the telco’s anchor programs under the Kabalikat sa Edukasyon pillar.

CommuniTeach, which was developed for elementary pupils, promotes the active participation of the community in improving learning among the lowest-performing students in public schools.  It is based on the premise that instilling in a child the love for learning is not the sole responsibility of the school or the teacher but also that of the entire community, including the DepEd, the LGU, the business sector, and the parents, among others.

In getting the community involved Smart hopes to put in place an enabling environment for elementary students, especially those in the lowest percentile of the class, to catch up with the rest of their classmates.

CommuniTeach traced its beginnings from Read-to-be-Smart, an employee-initiated summer tutorial and feeding program that seeks to help third graders from public elementary schools improve their reading skills and develop a love for reading. 

“Smart expanded the program in scale and partnerships to benefit more students in the country. We see community intervention and support in basic education through CommuniTeach as an effective tool for nation building,” said Stephanie Orlino, Smart manager for community partnerships.

The program, which was deployed in eight sites last year, has benefited some 520 elementary pupils from public elementary schools.  These are in the cities of Manila, Baguio and Naga in Luzon; Cordova in Cebu, Tagbilaran and Dumaguete in Visayas; and in Cagayan de Oro and General Santos for Mindanao.

For this school year, six of the eight sites have already started to conduct CommuniTeach with about 500 elementary pupils seen benefiting from the program, which is targeted on low-performing elementary students, whose families could not afford tutorial services.

Under the program, 40 pupils of the beneficiary public elementary school must complete activity modules based on their individual abilities to improve learning proficiencies so they are able to integrate better in formal classroom learning.

The modules, developed by non-government organization Silid Aralan, Inc., are administered by student and teacher volunteers from partner universities.

 “My tagline for Silid is, ‘we don’t just teach children how to learn, we teach them first how to love learning,’” said Arcie Mallari, founder and executive director of Silid Aralan, who also facilitates the trainings for volunteers.

The program is seen complementing the DepEd’s battle cry of “Education for all, no child is left behind,” taking from the United Nations’ Education for All (EFA) goal of meeting the learning needs of all children, youth and adults by 2015.

Initial data from the DepEd for the previous school year show that the school leaver rate for both public and private elementary schools from grades 1 to 6 averaged at 6.38 percent. High drop-out rate was registered for grade 1 at 13.06 percent, while the lowest rate of 3.2 percent was seen for grade 4.

In terms of survival rate, initial data for school year 2011-2012 showed an average of 70.96 percent from grades 1 to 6.  This means that of the original 100 pupils that enrolled in grade 1, only about 70 students are able to finish up to grade 6 last year.