More Filipinos can have access to Alternative Learning System

With the proposed P567.56 billion budget for 2017, the Department of Education (DepEd) assured that more Filipinos – regardless of their age – can have access to education through the Alternative Learning System (ALS).

“We cannot deny [the right to education to] those who have reached maturity but don’t know how to read and write,” said DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones before congressmen and stakeholders as she sought to defend the Department’s proposed budget for next year.

Briones said that some 16.59 million Filipinos now have better opportunity for employment and livelihood as the DepEd is “working double-time to revive and expand” the coverage of the ALS.

The figure, Briones said, translates to 39.03 percent or two-fifths of the entire labor force. It is based on the Philippine Statistics Authority’s (PSA) data on working Filipinos who have not completed basic education as of April 2016.

Furthermore, in data yielded by Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS), about four million Filipino children and youth were out of school in 2013.

According to Briones, the need to reach out to adults who failed to complete basic education, out-of-school children (OOSC), and out-of-school youth (OOSY) prompts DepEd to “do things out of the box because the problems are out of the box.”

One of the measures that Briones readily implemented is the creation of an Assistant Secretary position that will focus on strengthening ALS and re-integrating adults, OOSYs, and OOSCs in the formal school system.