Community ties pave way for education uplift

MANILA, Philippines - In 2004, Tayud National High School in Barangay Tayud, Consolacion, Cebu scored a measly 17 percent passing rate at the Regional Achievement Test conducted by the Department of Education. In 2009, it registered 68 percent.  This turnaround is a testament to how dynamic partnerships work for education enhancement.

Tayud and two other schools from Central Visayas ranked at the bottom three in terms of school performance. The Coalition for Better Education (CBE) came into the picture, with Globe Telecom participating as CBE member. CBE linked up with Tayud to intervene through INCUBE (Involving Communities for Better Education), a shared governance module designed to reverse the trend. 

Education was a secondary concern among parents, their primary concern being to put food on the table.  The really low involvement was among the issues CBE chose to address.

Internet connection was provided by Globe under its Internet-in-School (ISP) Program, which to date has connected 2,002 public high schools.  

Being ISP recipients, Tayud also benefited from Globe’s Global Filipino Teachers’ Program, a holistic six-day intensive training that equips teachers with adequate skills to use ICT for education.   

The GFT program differs from an ICT literacy program, the latter being a pre-requisite for the training. The focus is on integrating technology seamlessly into the lessons.

“Before GFT, teachers were more focused on the creation of their own lessons, but now, teachers use more approaches to a problem, online collaboration, the presence of the essential question for lessons,” says Tayud ICT coordinator and GFT facilitator Myrna Soco. 

Globe is also part of the community resource center – a partnership between the school, the local government and the community – to help promote the products and services of Tayud.

The center’s ground floor will house the Tayuran Multi-purpose cooperative, which is a showroom of Tayud’s furniture and other products.  Upstairs will be for knowledge support with internet access provided by Globe.