Sun.Star Pampanga

Accessible education for all

Maria Elena G. dela Cruz

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OVER the years, education has been addressing some of the issues regarding social inequity and well-being. The Department of Education has been very engrossed with making education accessible for all Filipinos.

According to the Department, poverty is one of the prevailing issues that resulted in the increase of out-of-school youths in the country. This has resulted in the lack of interest in school, particular­ly among male learners, who opted to work at an early age.

For females, one of the deciding factors in dropping out is early marriage or pregnancy. Third on the list is the high cost of education.

In light of these issues of poverty and dropping out, the DepEd is providing free or highly subsidized basic education to 27,216,398 learners in public and private schools nationwide.

Access to quality basic education is equally important, which the Department has been continuous­ly providing.

The agency has been successful in bringing back to the fold of formal education many of learners, though there are still hundreds and thousands of learners out there who don’t have access to education.

With education as a major instrument for developmen­t and getting out of poverty, the Alternativ­e Learning System (ALS) is a second-chance program for out-ofschool youths and adults - a parallel learning system that provides viable alternativ­e to the existing formal education instructio­ns.

The Last Mile Schools Program, meantime, targets hard-to-reach and conflictst­ricken areas in the country. This program reaches out to and closes the gap between Geographic­ally Isolated, Disadvanta­ged and Conflict-Affected (GIDCA) areas to their counterpar­ts in urban centers. These areas are provided with unhampered and equal access to quality-basic education.

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The author is Teacher III at Sta. Maria National High School, Bunducan,

Bagbaguin, Bulacan

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