Luistro pushes for health screening in all schools

Education Secretary Armin Luistro ordered yesterday all schools to screen their students, particularly kindergarten pupils, for diseases and other medical conditions.

Luistro, who opened the 11th School Health and Nutrition Congress at the Teachers’ Camp in Baguio City, said he would like for the Department of Education to have a complete profile of the health and nutrition conditions of every public elementary and high school student so DepEd could determine which school should have health interventions.

Education Undersecretary Yolanda Quijano, in the same congress, said poor learning has been attributed to the health condition of pupils.

Last Monday, Luistro attended a DepEd consultation for the K+12 basic education reform program. K+12 extends the elementary school cycle with Grade 7, and adds a fifth year for what is now the junior high school program, starting in 2012.

In 2016, the government will enforce a two-year senior high school program.

Rizalino Rivera, DepEd undersecretary for regional operations, said the agency’s health and nutrition concerns have been made part of the K+12 reforms.

Since all pupils must be “predisposed to learning,” the agency “cannot have children who are unhealthy (and) who have difficulty (absorbing classroom lessons),” he said.

DepEd’s mandate has always been “to ensure a student’s readiness to learn,” he said.

Luistro’s proposal is to popularize the screening process through classroom lessons, according to Ramon Bacani, director of the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization’s Regional Center for Educational Innovation and Technology.

For example the monthly exercise, which would require teachers to monitor a pupil’s weight, could be explored as a classroom math problem that would allow the student to understand what appropriate weight was necessary for his height or age, said Bacani, a former DepEd undersecretary.

Quijano, who heads the DepEd division for projects and programs, said the national screening process to be undertaken by teachers and school health workers must note the number of schools with bigger health problems.  /INQUIRER