A poor, disaster-prone province in the Philippines topped rankings in national secondary school exams, thanks to innovative curriculum and alternative approaches under an ADB loan project.
Tomas Oppus, Leyte - It is no accident that Southern Leyte, an impoverished region in the eastern Philippines, topped the standings in the recent National Achievement Test (NAT). Three of Southern Leyte's national high schools in fifth-class municipalities placed first, second, and third in the results for first-year high school students. In fact, eight of Southern Leyte's national high schools were in the top 30 for the country. That the test came just a week after a disastrous landslide buried a local elementary school made the feat even more meaningful to these communities.
Southern Leyte is one of the provinces where the ADB's Secondary Education Development and Improvement Project (SEDIP) began through a $53 million loan approved in 1998. The project benefits more than 1 million high school students in 26 of the Philippines' very poor provinces where enrollment, completion, and student performance levels were low. The project aimed to improve the quality of secondary education and access to such education in those provinces.
Under the project, school heads were trained in planning and management, and teachers were trained in subject knowledge and teaching skills. The project provided textbooks for students in core subjects, such as math, science, English, and Filipino. Some students unable to attend school regularly have been provided with an alternative secondary education program. Innovative ways to keep the students in school have been developed; some schools even have their own school feeding programs to discourage children from dropping out due to hunger. The SEDIP has also promoted the decentralization of secondary education management by building up the capacity of divisions, regions, and central offices to take on new responsibilities.
ADB's contribution in the "soft" areas (capacity development, school development, alternative school programs, and teaching-learning materials) of education was complemented through aid from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, which supported the project through infrastructure development (new schools and new classrooms for existing schools) and school equipment.
Overwhelmed
When the national test results came out, Southern Leyte schools division superintendent Dr. Violeta Alocilja literally "jumped for joy," even at the risk of suffering the fourth stroke of her life. After all, there was a time when Southern Leyte ranked second to the last in the eastern part of the Philippines' central Visayas region. But within a year of her appointment to Southern Leyte, the area was able to zoom up the list of SEDIP schools, rangking 3rd in the whole region. Last year, it ranked first among SEDIP divisions in eastern Visayas.
"SEDIP played a very significant role in influencing learning. It is also the stimulus which developed the schools, with all the inputs, learning packages, and the in-service training. It revitalized learning in the classroom. The learning that the school heads gathered from the training significantly developed their competence to lead the schools," Dr. Alocilja said.
"I am glad because, with SEDIP, all teachers are trained. And SEDIP insisted that the first ones who were trained be the same teachers to be trained for Phase 2. There's a very good tracking mechanism that they have installed for in-service training," she said. Teachers are, after all, the key in the learning process, she noted.
Rizal National High School teacher-in-charge Margarita Badeo said she initially thought it was a school in Metro Manila with the same name that had topped the exam rankings. "I was shocked. I did not expect it. I really have mixed emotions," Badeo said. She felt happy with her students' achievement, she said, but overwhelmed by the responsibility of keeping up with people's high expectations.
No Small Feat
These accomplishments are no small feat considering how difficult it is for students to even reach the school premises. Badeo's small school is located in a remote hill, and its 194 students wear rubber flip-flops to walk to school, going through mud and over a rugged uphill terrain. Some of them walk an hour or 5 kilometers each day just to get to class. The students change into shoes only inside the classroom. Most of the students are children of poor farmers and are malnourished, which poses an additional problem to the quality of learning. The school maximizes poor students' attendance through a daily feeding program: parents take turns bringing simple lunches for the entire school. This way, students do not have to leave school at lunchtime, or worse, drop out due to hunger.
In San Francisco town's Marayag National High School, the school of 40 students that placed second in the national rankings, students do not wear shoes either. Here, however, it is because shoes make the students' feet swell when they are walking through sand to reach the beachfront school. Again, access is a problem here: the school is just meters from the sea, and waves can get very high during the Philippines' powerful typhoon season. The school, nonetheless, has many best practices both in arts and academics.
"We are very happy that we got second place because our hard work in the daily reviews did not go to waste," says second-year high school student Daryl Aure, one of the students who took the NAT.
Teachers and students were well prepared for the exam, pumping in months of intense review and extra school hours that spilled into the weekends. Toward the exam date, they were given mock tests based on previous NATs.
Well-Prepared
When the landslide occurred, then-Education Secretary Fe Hidalgo gave the district the option to cancel the exams. The teachers decided to go through with the exams, focused as the students were.
"It is not, however, the review itself that enables students to perform well on exams but the process of making connections and seeing relationships between and among lessons," said Lolita Andrada, BSE Director and SEDIP project manager.
Students started their review months in advance. "By doing this preparation, we can improve more, maintain, and move higher," says Rico Amper, principal of third-place Pintuyan National High School, which sits on a hill in the heart of Pintuyan town, overlooking the sea.
The roads leading to Amper's school are being cemented, but several sections bear landslide warnings. In fact, the Mines and Geosciences Bureau has warned that the back of the 30-year-old school, where a creek is located, is vulnerable to landslides. Residents trust their safety to fate, and so far they have been lucky indeed.
"Here in Pintuyan, we are happy that we are not affected by landslides. The neighboring towns like Liloan, San Ricardo, and San Francisco - those three are really prone. We are very thankful to God that we are spared," says town councilor Eusebio Tiempo.
Creative Solutions
With an average ratio of 40 to 50 students in a class in this province, teachers manage the students better, unlike their counterparts in many other areas where class size is sometimes double that number.
Some learning challenges require particularly creative solutions. In the project's High School Innovation Fund (HSIF), innovative interventions are used to help students with low reading comprehension or for other activities to improve student performance. They are identified and grouped into one class for reading sessions where they are given exercises such as silent reading, shown films, and encouraged to understand the story. From frustration, they progress to independence.
In the project's Secondary Schooling Alternatives component, students at risk of dropping out are assisted. Some principals and teachers provide scholarships out of their own pockets.
Wendy Duncan, ADB Senior Project Management Specialist, commended the understudy program for principals in Southern Leyte, which means there are no gaps in the school hierarchy at any time, such as during training programs.
