P1.8 billion earmarked for government pre-school education program

MANILA, Philippines - Some P1.8 billion has been earmarked to reinforce the government’s pre-school education program, Cotabato Rep. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza said yesterday.

The allocation, contained in the P1.541-trillion national budget for 2010, would support the pre-schooling of 1,271,536 children in line with the goal to make every five-year-old ready for formal grade schooling by 2015, she said.

“We really have to improve access to free pre-school services nationwide if we are to make our children highly competitive at an early age,” she said.

“Our lack of universal pre-schooling is one of the reasons why we are being left behind by other countries in terms of basic education,” she lamented.

She pointed out that children in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and New Zealand enjoy four years of pre-schooling, while those in the United States and the United Kingdom have two to three years of early childhood education.

Pre-schooling here is almost entirely provided by the private sector, and thus costly and largely inaccessible, she added.

Taliño-Mendoza said the fresh funding would enable the government to train additional pre-school teachers and day care staff; support existing classes with five-year-old children; service-contract extra classes, mostly in fifth and sixth class towns without day care centers; and administer the Grade 1 Readiness Assessment Test.

At present, free pre-schooling is limited to day care centers under the Barangay-Level Total Development and Protection of Children Act of 1990, or Republic Act 6972.

The law created a day care program “to defend the rights of children to assistance, including proper care and nutrition, and to provide them with special protection against all forms of neglect, abuse, cruelty, exploitation and other conditions prejudicial to their development.”

Barangay-based day care centers provide temporary care for children during the day, and allow parents to pursue productive activities.

Under the Early Childhood Care Development Act of 2000, or RA 8990, day care centers became semi-formal learning facilities that prepare children, over a period of six to 10 months, for elementary schooling.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development runs the community-based centers, which are backed mostly by retired teachers and volunteers. Local government units cover a portion of staff pay and other expenses.

Taliño-Mendoza is pushing for the passage of new legislation that would establish a free, two-level compulsory public pre-schooling system - Kinder 1 and Kinder 2 - for children below six years old.

Kinder 1, for children three to four years old, would be provided by day care centers, which would all be converted and upgraded into community pre-schools. The schools would be financed partly by local governments with the support of the local school board.

Kinder 2, for children five-years-old or below six, would be provided by all existing and new public elementary schools.– Jess Diaz