DepEd issues guidelines on education program

Education Undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz has issued guidelines in relation to the implementation of the secondary education program this year.

The monitoring and evaluation study of the implementation of the 2002 Basic Education Curriculum identifies the strengths and development areas of the program.

"The purpose of the multiple case studies is not to produce an objective body of knowledge that can be generalized to all schools in the country, but to build collaboratively constructed descriptions and interpretations of practices, that enable supervisors, school heads, department heads, supervisors and teachers, to formulate acceptable ways of implementing the BEC, and to solve implementation problems that emerge," Luz said.

Some of the guidelines in the curriculum provide that the school head should organize a committee to identify and describe the curricular, instructional, supervisory, assessment, and managerial practices that do not contribute to the development of the student.

Focus group conversations may be conducted to clarify the school and non-school factors that reinforce the questionable practices and to develop and implement action programs to remove the inconsistencies.

The guidelines also stated that there should be a school assurance team to coordinate, monitor and evaluate the implementation of the action program, and the removal of the inconsistencies should be among the primary goals of the school improvement plan and the focus of instructional supervision.

School heads should also capitalize and reinforce the positive attitude of the teachers toward the BEC, particularly its instructional approaches. They should increase the teachers' capability and confidence in using the approaches by providing the competencies they need.

Schools should also consider developing the effectiveness of the measures increasing students' English proficiency.

This includes voluntary participation in English remedial sessions facilitated by volunteer students who will be selected by their English proficiency and are given special training on how to facilitate group learning.

A system of incentive is provided to both walk-in students and volunteer facilitators. The participation in the project of both mentors and learners is voluntary but the school provides an incentive system to support the project.

The guidelines also provide the holding of regular English writing and impromptu speaking contests using criterion-referenced evaluation. At the end of the semester, the classes with the biggest number of winners are given citations.

Using the results of achievement tests for the previous years, the school should conduct frequency and error analysis of English competencies that the students failed to master. - Jasmin R. Uy and Norvie Misa