To Ma’am with love

MANILA, Philippines - If you’ve always wanted to teach but never had the right credentials to do so — this might be the help you’re waiting for.

The Philippine Business for Education (PBED) partnered up with the Australian Government to create the Scholarships for Teacher Education Programs to Upgrade Teacher Quality in the Philippines (STEP UP) campaign. STEP UP is an initiative that seeks to attract good-performing college graduates and professionals who are looking into pursuing a teaching profession by offering them competitive scholarship packages. This opportunity aims to address the huge deficit of teachers in the country by making an easier way for qualified bachelor’s degree holders to earn a teaching certificate and shift into a career in education.  A total of 1,000 scholarships will be awarded to deserving candidates until  2019. The goal of the program is to produce 1,000 high-quality teachers ready for public school employment by the same year. 

To encourage more people to apply for the scholarship, STEP UP launched an eight-part #DearTeacher video campaign that aims to pay tribute to the teachers who inspired a few of our favorite modern-day influencers to believe in themselves and helped them become the people they are now.

“To get people to apply to STEP UP, we knew we had to showcase the one advantage that teaching has over other careers: the incomparable sense of fulfillment you get from helping others reach their dreams. With this video, we hope to demonstrate that teachers do more than just teach numbers, letters and formulas — they help shape the future by shaping the minds of future leaders of industry,” says PBED executive director Love Basillote.

The STEP UP Teacher Scholarship Program is open to all bachelor’s degree holders (except B.S. Education graduates) between ages 25-45 with a general weighted average of at least 85percent. Selected applicants will receive up to P140,000 in scholarship benefits towards the Certificate in Teaching Program (CTP), a 6- to 12-month, non-degree course that equips non-teachers with the theories and techniques they need to become effective educators.

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For more details, visit their website at www.stepupph.org.