PARTNERSHIP SEALED | (From left) Roy Raul Mendiola, national sales manager of the Inquirer; Calumpit Vice Mayor Zacarias Candelaria, who represented Calumpit Mayor Glorime Faustino; Connie Kalagayan, Inquirer’s assistant vice president for corporate affairs and executive director of Inquirer Foundation; and Calumpit Department of Education South District supervisor Alexander Cruz, sign a memorandum of agreement for the INQskwela project during a ceremony held at the municipal hall of Calumpit on Monday. (Photo by CARMELA REYES-ESTROPE / Inquirer Central Luzon)
CALUMPIT, Bulacan, Philippines — Students and teachers from seven public and private high schools in this town will now have free access to Inquirer Plus, or INQPlus, the digital platform of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, to keep their students abreast of current events without the need to get a print copy from newsstands.
Calumpit became the sixth local government to partner with the Inquirer and the Inquirer Foundation when the INQskwela project was revived last year after being halted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vice Mayor Zacarias Candelaria represented Mayor Glorime Faustino during the signing of the memorandum of agreement with the Inquirer’s executives—Connie Kalagayan, assistant vice president for corporate affairs and the foundation’s executive director; Roy Raul Mendiola, national sales manager; and Adela Mendoza, sales director—at the Calumpit municipal hall on Monday.
Candelaria said the partnership would help the youth in this town not only develop their English comprehension but also have direct access to news articles that are found on the country’s top daily broadsheet.
He said Faustino found the partnership to be beneficial for the high school students since it would help them differentiate factual news from fake news.
According to Kalagayan, the project is part of the Inquirer’s thrust to help the youth develop their love of reading through the more accessible digital form of the Inquirer.
Learning aid
Under the agreement, the digital newspaper would serve as a supplemental learning aid for 30 teachers of Araling Panlipunan (social studies), English and journalism.
The seven participating schools are Caniogan High School, Frances National High School, Sta Lucia National High School, San Miguel Meysulao High School, Calumpit National High School, Colegio de Calumpit and St. John the Baptist Catholic School.
Part of the agreement is the one-year subscription period for INQPlus sponsored by the local government. The digital version of the Inquirer is uploaded on INQPlus at 4 a.m. daily.
Remarkable improvement
In addition, the participating schools will each receive for free three print copies of the Inquirer, Mendiola said during the signing.
Kalagayan said INQskwela was conceived in response to the 2018 findings of the Program for International Student Assessment (Pisa), which showed that the Philippines scored the lowest in reading comprehension out of the 79 countries evaluated. Pisa is a worldwide study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that measures every three years the reading, mathematics and science literacy of 15-year-old students.
By making the newspaper readily available to schools as supplemental learning material for junior and senior high school classes, the project hopes to help improve their students’ reading skills, critical thinking, media literacy and general understanding of current events.
Based on the reports of the principals and superintendents of the participating schools, the students have shown remarkable improvement in their reading comprehension and other skills where the digital paper served as a teaching aid, Kalagayan said.
“Most of the kids who joined the quiz bees and debates became more confident. So, aside from the improved learning skills, the boost in their confidence was a testament to the success of the program,” she added.
According to Alexander Cruz, Department of Education district supervisor in Calumpit South, the project would also provide the students with a library of current events through back issues available on INQPlus.
“The latest news will just be at the click of a finger. It’s hard to get a newspaper at times, particularly during rainy days and high tide when there are scattered floods in the town,” Cruz said.
He added: “Both old and new copies of the newspaper will serve as library materials for the students, which can be accessed right at our fingertips.”