By Harvey S. Keh
IT’S June again and classes just opened last week for millions of Filipino students, more than 90.0 percent of which study at public elementary and high schools. To understand the plight of basic education in our country, one need not look further than to check the state of public schools and the performance of its students. Here are some startling facts:
* Out of 10 students who enter Grade 1, only six will be able to finish elementary and only four will eventually finish high school.
* Class sizes still remain a problem with some public schools in highly populated areas having an average class size of 80 to 90 students.
* More than 20.0 percent of our public high school students cannot understand what they are reading and worse, majority of our public schools do not have functional and adequate libraries.
* In recent years, less than 10.0 percent of our 1st year public high school students manage to pass the High School Readiness Test (HRET) even if the passing score has already been pegged at 50.0 percent.
* International Surveys in Mathematics and Science have consistently placed our country at the bottom of the rankings with poor African countries like Ghana and Botswana. On the other hand, our Asian neighbors such as Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan are found at the top of the rankings.
What can be done to reverse this alarming trend? According to Fr. Bienvenido Nebres, S.J., President of the Ateneo de Manila University and a well-known education reform advocate, studies have shown that there are many factors that can contribute to the success of a public school but there are two main factors that usually stand out which is, the leadership of the principal and the support of the community.
These two main factors are what the Acts of Hope for the Nation (AHON) Foundation, the corporate foundation of Filway Marketing, Inc., the exclusive Philippine distributor of Time Life Books, aims to tap towards helping public elementary schools build adequate and functional libraries. How can one expect our public school students to learn how to read if they do not have books to read in the first place? AHON Foundation uses social entrepreneurship to develop innovative and sustainable solutions towards solving the education divide in our public schools.
AHON Foundation does not just give books to public elementary schools. It helps mobilize the community under the leadership of the school principal towards working together to set up a good library that students can use. I have never been a believer of dole-outs thus, when we started AHON Foundation, our chairman, Mr. Hector Tagaysay and I decided that we would only help communities who are willing to help themselves.
In a typical AHON Library build which is done in a month’s time, parents work together to repaint the library, teachers raise funds to buy new shelves, the barangay pitches in by providing new tables and chairs and the local government unit donates computers for the students to use. When the library is finished, AHON Foundation through the support of Filway Marketing, Inc. and some donors come in and donate more than P 500,000.00 worth of brand new books and reference materials such as encyclopedias, almanacs and atlases. After AHON inaugurates a library, the students usually seem hesitant to use the books. Most of them have never seen brand new and up to date books in their libraries. But upon telling them that the books are for them to use, their eyes light up and they start devouring every bit of knowledge found in these books.
In some of these library builds, college student volunteers from the University of the Philippines conduct story-telling sessions with the students. Through this “bayanihan” way of putting up a new library, everyone becomes a stakeholder and an owner of the project thus, it will become everyone’s responsibility to ensure that the library is used properly.
Hopefully, through AHON builds, communities learn to work together for education and realize that they can achieve great things by sharing the responsibility of providing quality education for their children with each other. It reminds me of the old African proverb that indeed, it takes a whole village to raise a child.
Since its inception in 2006, AHON Foundation has already helped build 14 public elementary school libraries in Marikina, Quezon City, Nueva Ecija and Pampanga.
Here is a photo of the AHON library in Quezon City.
Here is Mayor Sonia Lorenzo of San Isidro, Nueva Ecija during the turnover of books.
To know more about AHON Foundation, you can visit their website at http://ahonfoundation.blogspot.com or you can contact them at (02) 683-0262 local 109.
If you are interested to know more about Social Entrepreneurship or would like to learn to become a Social Entrepreneur, please feel free to contact the Ateneo de Manila University-School of Government by sending an email to ateneoylse (at) gmail (dot) com or calling us at (02) 426-5657.
Editor’s note: Harvey Keh is the director for youth leadership and social entrepreneurship at the Ateneo de Manila School of Government.
First photo shows children reading the AHON-donated books.
June 20th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Am from Tawi Tawi, we hope we can immulate the things you have been doing.
The Tawi Tawi situationer, re: education, is worst compared to the data you have mentioned….
June 18th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
i am a product of the public schools and i personally can attest to the facts that were given above. since elementary, i have seen the poor condition of the public schools. it saddens me though that until now, there are very little developments in our public schools. i am hoping that the government will be able to act well on these problems when it comes to our education and that more schools will be able to benefit from the AHON Foundation.
June 18th, 2008 at 7:48 am
If the leadership of the principal is a key success factor, then perhaps the DepEd should give more autonomy to the principals of its public schools — not treat them as nothing more than managers for them who would do their bidding.