Knowing & understanding more about Education for All (EFA)

By NAPOLEON B. IMPERIAL
Chief Economic Development Specialist

Education and Manpower Development Division, Social Development Staff,

National Economic and Development Authority

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After almost 10 years since the inception of the second decade of  the EDUCATION FOR ALL movement and just six years left before it closes in 2015, I just fully discovered yesterday how little most people in the country’s education community has known EFA. What is startling is that the innocence afflicts those who are supposed to be in the inner circle of the movement of what is supposed to be the EFA Grand Alliance at the national and subnational levels.   I suppose this might also be the case for most of  the TEDPLoopers.

You might have been wondering how different it is from the day-to-day business of the DepEd in general and basic education in particular.

I hope that the following foreword I have written for the Mid-Decade Monitoring and Evaluation Report in 2007 will shed more light and deepen everyone’s perspectives. Beyond mere understanding, the new perspective of delivering what for whom may spur some thinking and action for innovating basic education so that it will be enjoyed by and benefit ALL.

So here it goes:

Following the country’s Plan of Action for Education for All, this Mid-decade Report is all about the goals and efforts of the Philippines to make the Filipinos become functionally literate.

Attaining functional literacy in the country in the next 10 EFA years is NOT JUST ABOUT SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLING.  It is about education. In line with the World Declaration on Education for All embodied in both Jomtien Declaration and Dakar Framework, we would like to meet the totality of the so-called Basic Learning Needs (BLNs) of Filipinos of all ages and circumstances. This is to be pursued within EFA’s “expanded vision of education” in a manner that will fulfill our people’s basic human right.

This is not the usual type of educational planning. Our EFA 2015 Plan of Action’s significance to the country  and the international education community lies more in it s being a document of political will, imagination and creativity that should address long-persistent problems of basic education.  This is about harnessing technical change or new ways of doing things that have been proven valid, feasible and desirable in the past in order that the marginalized, those outside or shut out of school system, those in danger of getting out of the school system, special groups-and-gender disadvantaged may be redeemed and prevented from further marginalization.

The school remains as the backbone of our educational delivery system. We would like to improve on it as the conventional venue for teaching and learning.   However, for all the natural limitations and social and financial constraints of the school system to attract, enroll and keep children in schools, EFA 2015 is a time  to maximize the use of educational innovations and technology, both simple and appropriate or advance, where applicable – to reach out to and keep more children and enable them to learn better. This way, we can move towards universalizing quality primary education and making secondary education more accessible to all.

Schooling need not be the end and sole venue for one’s acquiring functional skills needed for life. We realized during the past 15 years since EFA 1 that if we would depend on the schools alone, we would not be able to provide education to ALL EDUCABLE FILIPINOS. Thus, consistent with the EFA vision, it is also our intention to deliver or cause to deliver the BLNs via the non-school modalities. Those who cannot be accommodated in schools or choose learning outside the classroom has the Alternative Learning System or ALS  as an option for our youths and adults from all social classes. With ALS, they can utilize their prior learning and go on learning and be empowered by the basic but useful competencies to survive and develop themselves for greater upward social mobility.

In either case, in school or out of school, such learning shall be delivered with quality assurance anchored on the Philippine concept of “functionality.” With this as the hallmark of the Plan, gaining “life skills” shall be afforded to all Filipino learners.

The Philippine Department of Education, thankfully, is not alone in the pursuit of this goal and provision of the BLNs for all.  Full partnership with the key stakeholders, particularly those responsible for delivery, planning and funding is operationalized under the Grand Alliance for EFA prescribed by the World Declarations.  Hence, a new way of looking at and counting, allocating and mobilizing financial and non-monetary resources has been launched under EFA. These processes will be orchestrated under one strategy and governance so that with the comprehensive set of old and new monitoring and evaluation indicators attuned to the educational objectives, the synchronized efforts will bring out commonly desired results preferably at the commonly scheduled time.

Lastly and with a sense of humility, EFA 2015 and its Grand Alliance strategy behooves learning from and capitalizing on the past experiences of our successes, pitfalls and inadequacies.  Through this strategy, we hope to ensure continuity, coherence of purpose and complementation of efforts regardless of management and administrations until the year 2015.

source: Multilingual Philippines