CyberEd to push through; DepEd needs P2 B in funding

LAHUG, Cebu – The Department of Education (DepEd) is hoping to get P2 billion to fund the implementation of a five-year plan to set up a cyber education program in the public education system starting next year.

Education Secretary Jesli Lapus, in an interview with education reporters covering the 3rd National Information Communication Technology in Basic Education Congress being held at the Waterfront Hotel Lahug in Cebu, said that DepEd was already in the final stages of drawing up their ICT for Education (ICT4E) strategic plan that will provide the policy and technical roadmap to be followed by DepEd for the undertaking.

Lapus said the ICT4E plan could be finished next month and ready for implementation in 2009 if the P2-billion budget will be granted by the national government.

“We need to have a master plan for all stakeholders to follow, the same way that we have the BESRA or the Basic Education Sector Reform Agenda which is the roadmap of everything that’s being done in reforming and transforming education,” Lapus said.

The ICT conference was organized by the Foundation for Information Technology Education and Development, Inc., headed by its chairman, Roberto Romulo, and the University of the Philippines Open University.

Lapus said that the ICT4E plan is a “five-year strategic plan” that will cover everything in the push to integrate ICT in public schools, from the establishment of the physical IT structure needed by the program, to the policy, procurement, and curriculum requirements of the undertaking.

However, Lapus said that vital to their push for the integration of ICT in public schools was the P2-billion budget allocation in the proposed P167-billion budget of DepEd for 2009. This, he said, will be used to fund the first year of the ICT4E project’s implementation hopefully by next year.

“If we’ll not get it, we’ll find ways (to raise funds),” Lapus said.

Lapus said that the P2-billion budget has apparently been disapproved by the Department of Budget and Management recently but DepEd will lobby for a reconsideration.

DepEd had earlier wanted to implement the controversial P26-billion Cyber Education Program (CEP) to enable satellite-based distance education in some 37,000 public schools.

However, the Chinese loan financing arranged to fund the program was scrapped along with other Chinese overseas development assistance loan-funded projects.

The scrapping of the Chinese ODA funded projects came at the height of the controversy on the cancelled national broadband network project of the Department of Transportation and Communications with Chinese telecom firm ZTE Corp. earlier this year.

Before it was scrapped, DepEd’s CEP had also been questioned by some groups in the private and public education sectors for having been adopted as a priority project of the education department even without a thorough study or a pilot test of the project.

Lapus said that the 3rd National ICT in Basic Education Congress being held in Cebu was a great opportunity for DepEd to get inputs and suggestions from stakeholders in the public and private sector as it finalizes the ICT4E roadmap.

“Two things make me proud about the DepEd ICT4E plan that we are finalizing. First, it is comprehensive yet detailed. Second, while benchmarked on global best practices, it is the result of extensive stakeholder engagement,” Lapus said.