Pagtuki tackles back to school woes

SHORTAGE in educational materials and school facilities, such as chairs and blackboards, has been a perennial problem in public schools at the start of a school year.

School year 2013-2014 officially opened last June 3 nationwide.

During the June 1 episode of Pagtuki, the official radio program of Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. (RAFI), Dr. Danny Gudilusao, education supervisor in Science of the Department of Education (DepEd) Cebu City Division, said that shortage of education resources is aggravated with the increase in the number of enrolees.

“There is a projected two percent increase of student population for this school year. As the student population grows, we need to address concerns like lack of classrooms in public schools. Late enrolment, which happens every year, also adds to our list,” he said.

“With the help of Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), there will be another 1,000 classrooms to be constructed within this year. We are closely working with the agency to address the current needs of our education system,” said DepEd regional director Dr. Carmelita Dulangon.

This school year marks the second year of K to 12 program.

“Through our massive information-dissemination and advocacy campaigns, we let the parents understand the essence of the new education program,” Gudilusao said.

RAFI partnered with the University of San Jose-Recoletos (USJ-R) to help improve the quality of instruction of teachers in Kindergarten to Grade 3 in response to the K to 12 feature allowing the usage of mother tongue in class instructions in the said grade levels.

Eighty public school teachers from Cebu will undergo intensive training on the use of the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) in the teaching-learning process.

Pagtuki is aired over dyLA AM every Saturday at 10-11 a.m. The program tackles issues on community development, politics and governance, education, among others.