LEARNERS AS CENTER OF BASIC EDUCATION

AIRA MAE G. NAGUIT

With the adoption of the Rights-Based Education (RBE) Framework for Philippine Basic Education, the (DepEd) stressed that the center of the Philippine basic education is the learner, particularly the child.

The RBE Framework underscores the duty of schools, learning centers, and offices to respect, protect, fulfill, and actively promote the full range of rights of children, and clarifies that the right to education pertains to the quality of education received by the learners and their well-being in their learning environments.

The agency was recently lauded for the strict implementation of its Gender-Responsive Basic Education Policy or DepEd Order No 32, s.2017. This came after a series of reported incidents in schools where students and teachers alike were discriminated and subject to gender-based exclusion because of their gender identities and expressions.

The Gender-Responsive Basic Education Policy “seeks to enable the DepEd to undertake gender-mainstreaming in education to address both enduring and emerging gender and sexuality-related issues in basic education, to promote the protection of children from all forms of gender-related violence, abuse, exploitation, discrimination, and bullying, and to promote gender equality and non-discrimination in the workplace and within the DepEd.”

The said policy covers officials and employees of the DepEd; officials and employees of private elementary, junior, and senior high schools; and learners of public and private elementary, junior, and senior high schools, and of learning centers for Special Education and Alternative Learning Systems and laboratory schools of State Universities and Colleges, and Local Universities and Colleges.

Stakeholders expressed hope that the policy directive reduces, if not totally eliminates, gender-based violence and discrimination in schools by genuinely ensuring that education institutions remain learner-friendly and are progressively working towards of gender quality in educational outcomes.

-oOoThe author is a Teacher III at San Agustin Elementary School, Magalang South District