FOR THE LOVE OF READING | The Philippine Daily Inquirer, the municipal government of San Manuel in Tarlac, and the Department of Education signed on Thursday, March 23, 2023, a memorandum of agreement giving 17 local schools access to Inquirer Plus, the newspaper’s digital platform, through the INQskwela project. The signatories are (from left) Roy Raul Mendiola, Inquirer national sales manager; San Manuel Vice Mayor Sir Benjamin Tesoro (signing for Mayor Doña Cresencia Tesoro); Connie Kalagayan, Inquirer assistant vice president for corporate affairs and executive director of the Inquirer Foundation; and Dr. Rommel Reginaldo, district supervisor of the San Manuel Schools Division Office. (Photo by MARIA ADELAIDA CALAYAG)
SAN MANUEL, Tarlac, Philippines — Thirteen public elementary schools, two integrated schools, and two public high schools were given access to Inquirer Plus (INQPlus), the digital platform of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, under a partnership forged on March 23 with the municipal government here.
San Manuel became the fourth local government in the country to partner with the Inquirer and the Inquirer Foundation for the INQskwela project, according to Connie Kalagayan, the publication’s assistant vice president for corporate affairs and the foundation’s executive director.
INQskwela aims to promote reading among the youth by offering the newspaper as a classroom resource for discussions on current events, media literacy, and critical thinking.
“The Inquirer shouldn’t just be telling you the ‘what where, when’ of the news. We don’t just tell you the bad and the good news because I believe that a good company should also be able to provide solutions to the news we come out with,” said Kalagayan during the signing of a memorandum of agreement (MOA) at the conference room of the San Manuel Farmers Center.
Under the partnership, the local government will sponsor the Inquirer Plus subscription for the participating schools.
Learning aid
She said INQPlus would mainly serve as a supplemental learning aid for faculty members who are teaching Araling Panlipunan (social studies), English, and journalism-related subjects.
INQskwela was conceived by the newspaper in 2019 to address the results of the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) that showed the country’s poor performance in global reading comprehension.
According to the Pisa study, elementary and high school students in the Philippines ranked lowest in reading comprehension, and second lowest in science and mathematics out of the 79 countries evaluated.
“We felt that it’s a big challenge for education in the Philippines. It’s a big challenge for the teachers and part of the problem in the local government units. That’s why we came up with the idea of INQskwela,” Kalagayan said in her speech.
Fighting fake news
She said the project would give students easier access to a credible source of information and commentary at a time when fake news and disinformation could easily spread online.
Signing the MOA were Kalagayan; Inquirer national sales manager Roy Raul Mendiola; Dr. Rommel Reginaldo, district supervisor of the Office of the Schools Division – Department of Education; and San Manuel Mayor Doña Cresencia Tesoro, who was represented by her brother, Vice Mayor Sir Benjamin Tesoro.
“Let us help ourselves, and let us help (the Inquirer) in helping us further strengthen education,” the vice mayor said in his speech.
Dr. Artbie Samson, the principal of the San Agustin Integrated School, said he was hoping the students would “discover or further develop their love of reading and knowledge of current events” through the project, adding: “The newspapers will also serve as learning aid for teachers since news is incorporated into their lesson plans.”
He said the INQPlus app would also help aspiring journalists embrace what he described as the “magic of journalism.”
“They (students) will be given more lessons about the dos and don’ts of journalism, “ Samson added.
Under the project, proponents would also conduct debates and quiz bees among the 17 schools to test their knowledge about current events.
Earlier InqSkwela partners include the local governments of Manila, Valenzuela City, and Victorias City (Negros Occidental). Five more partnerships are currently in the works.