Tuesday, September 3, 2013

U.S. Can Learn From Other Countries' Education Systems


U.S. Can Learn From Other Countries' Education Systems


It's time for America to start following other countries' leads when it comes to education, according to a new report by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), an organization that researches education systems around the world. The group held a conference Tuesday in Washington, D.C. to release the report, which was attended by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, politicians, and school leaders.
Education achievement in the U.S. has fallen to the middle of the pack among developed nations, according to the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which ranked the knowledge of 15-year-olds in 70 countries. The U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science, and 25th in mathematics.
The new NCEE report, "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: An American Agenda for Education Reform," which studied the overall education systems in Canada, China, Finland, Japan, and Singapore, says that America can solve this educational crisis by looking at it like it looked at manufacturing at the turn of the 20th century.
"We took the best ideas in steelmaking, industrial chemicals and many other fields from England and Germany and others and put them to work here on a scale that Europe could only imagine," the report says. By using the educational strategies of successful nations, NCEE says, the U.S. can catch up.
"The most effective way to greatly improve student performance in the United States is to figure out how the countries with top student performance are doing it, build on their achievements and then, by building on our unique strengths, figure out how to do it even better," Marc Tucker, NCEE's CEO, said in a statement.
The report's recommendation requiring students to pass tests at certain grade levels before continuing their education is likely to be controversial. Hypothetically, students would have to pass a "gateway test" at the end of middle school and again at the end of 10th grade in order to move on to the next grade. NCEE says gateway tests in other countries are well-designed, comprehensive, and standardized throughout the nation. "Because the exams are very high quality, they cannot be 'test prepped;' the only way to succeed on them is to actually master the material," NCEE says.
Other recommendations include the reallocation of money—spending more on paying quality teachers and less on state-of-the-art school facilities, new textbooks, and administrators. The report also recommends that states take more of a responsibility for funding schools, moving away from the majority local-funded system the country uses now.
The report praises the new Common Core State Standards, a state-led initiative launched last year that set guidelines for student achievement in math and English and has been adopted in 42 states. But it also says America needs to go further by expanding the system to the rest of the core curriculum with subjects such as history and science. NCEE also worries that relying on computer-scored exams to provide readings on student achievement, which the Common Core does, is a gamble.

Other countries "are deeply skeptical that computer-scored tests or examinations can adequately measure the acquisition of the skills and knowledge they are most interested in," NCEE says. "If the United States is right about this, we will wind up with a significant advantage over our competitors in the accuracy, timeliness and cost of scoring. If we are wrong, we will significantly hamper our capacity to measure the things we are most interested in measuring."

Alternative Education...Compare the Difference

THE COMPULSORY EDUCATION SYSTEM: THREE CHALLENGES FOR THOSE INVOLVED IN ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION
The Demands of the Compulsory Education System
On Paper …
Japan’s post-war Constitution (1946) and Fundamental Law of Education (2006) form the legal basis for the compulsory education system. Article 26 of the Constitution of Japan states that, ‘All people shall have the right to receive an equal education correspondent to their ability, as provided by law’, and ‘All people shall be obligated to have all boys and girls under their protection receive ordinary education as provided for by law. Such compulsory education shall be free’.
Japan’s new Fundamental Law of Education, enacted in 2006, maintains the wording of the 1947 law, which it replaced, in stating that ‘The people shall all be given equal opportunities of receiving education according to their ability, and they shall not be subject to educational discrimination on account of race, creed, sex, social status, economic position, or family origin’ (Article 4: Equal Opportunity of Education), and that ‘The people shall be obligated to have boys and girls under their protection receive a general education…’ (Article 5: Compulsory Education). The 1947 School Education Law deals with the practical application of the Fundamental Law of Education.
… and in Practice
What happens in practice is that all children of Japanese parents automatically receive notice of which local school they have been enrolled in, and when they should begin school.  As far as most people are concerned, the parents’ basic responsibility for the child’s education then lies simply in preparing the things that the school tells them to prepare (school bag, sports clothes, etc.) and making sure that the child attends.
Children are automatically enrolled in the school nearest to their home, and until 1997 there was little provision for a child to transfer between schools. In 1997, MEXT loosened the school district system, advising local education boards to be flexible about applications for children to change schools for reasons such as bullying, violence or health problems (Nemoto, 1999, 18; MEXT, 1997).
In the current system, the proscribed nine years of compulsory education cover six years at elementary school and three at junior high school, meaning that the child is in compulsory education from the age of six to the age of fifteen. While private schools are available at elementary and junior high school level, (only 1% of elementary schools and 6.4% of junior high schools were private in 2004), it is not until the non-compulsory level, i.e. high school, that there is a great range of educational options available to the average Japanese family (29.5% of high schools were private in 2004) (MEXT, 2005c, 4).
Parents may enrol their child in a MEXT-approved private school, or under certain circumstances they may ask for an exemption or postponement of compulsory education for their child, although this is rare. MEXT figures show that in 2004, 91 children were granted exemption from compulsory education for health-related reasons; 147 because they were ‘consigned to homes for the education and training of juvenile delinquents’; and a further 2,198 children for unspecified ‘other’ reasons (MEXT, 2005a). A marginal note to Article 22 of the School Education Law says that the education board may, at its own discretion, admit an exception for families where one of the parents has a foreign nationality (Ichihara, 2002; see also MEXT, 1984): an unspecified number of such cases are contained in this figure.
Dealing with the rigid automatic enrolment system, and the school and education board officials who enforce it, is a challenging and often worrying experience for parents choosing alternative education for their children. Ironically, even the ‘opt out’ families who actively choose not to send their children to state schools usually end up with them still enrolled in the schools.
The First Challenge: The Law
‘Dropping Out’ is Tolerated, and ‘Opt Out’ Families Benefit from this
School non-attendance figures reached record levels in 2001 (MEXT, 2005c, 19) and are an ongoing source of concern for the Japanese government. When it comes to enforcing school attendance laws, then, MEXT urges leniency for school non-attendees, recognizing that forcing children back to school is not the answer to the problem. Since 1992, MEXT has allowed attendance at free schools to be counted as regular school attendance – and the students retain their seki (place) at the school in which they are enrolled, even if they no longer attend it (Ishikida, 2005, 4-1-2). Children with a seki receive free school textbooks and can easily return to the school where they are enrolled at any time. Maintaining a seki also means that the children will end up with school records detailing that they have completed compulsory education, which has long been a standard requirement for higher education and many jobs, although recently it has become easier to proceed without this paperwork (see below).
Although it now sanctions the existence of free schools, MEXT has made no public pronouncements about homeschooling or church schools. So far, children who ‘drop out’ of compulsory education and turn to these options are generally treated in the same way as children in free schools.
Families choosing to ‘opt out’ of compulsory education benefit to some extent from the leniency created by the ‘drop out’ issue, but the basic legal status of a parent’s right to choose alternative schooling remains unclear. As with those attending free schools, almost all Japanese students in the ‘opt out’ category who are homeschooled or attend church schools are asked to keep a seki at the school in which they have been automatically enrolled. This means that the responsibility for the child’s education remains with the school, and so some schools ask children to submit reports of their studies to the school, or prove that they are enrolled in an umbrella organization. The principal of Church School B indicated that even though all his students live in the same area, they are all treated in different ways by the schools in which they are enrolled. This is representative of the picture nationwide – homeschoolers and church school students are treated on a ‘case by case’ basis by schools and education boards.
Is ‘Opting Out’ Legal?
Arguments about the legality of alternative education, and particularly about whether Japanese laws allow parents to educate their children outside of the compulsory system, have rested mainly on the interpretation of the words ‘ordinary education’ in Article 26 of the Constitution and the words ‘general education’ in Article 4 of the 1947 Fundamental Law of Education. (The equivalent article (Article 5) in the new Fundamental Law of Education retains the same wording for ‘general education’).
Homeschool advocates such as Ichihara (2002) and Tada (2006), who is a lawyer writing for Japan’s first and best-known free school, Tokyo Shure, claim that the School Education Law which enforces compulsory education is not perfectly faithful to the Constitution. They point out that the Constitution does not equate ‘ordinary education’ (Article 26), which all children have the right to receive, with ‘school education’: the Constitution neither specifies what ‘ordinary education’ is, nor states how or where it is to take place. Because of this, it can be argued that alternative education fulfils the legal requirements for a child’s education. Ichihara further argues that the allied forces, who oversaw the writing of the present constitution, would never have sanctioned an article which would give the government authority to force children to attend schools where the curriculum was designed under government censorship: she points out that such a scenario would open up possibilities of brainwashing students, and be little different from the educational situation just prior to the war.
An article on ‘Homeschoolnet Renkon’ (2004) agrees with the views of Ichihara (2000) and Tada (2006) that the Constitution does not proscribe home education: the writer also argues that Article 26 of the Constitution in fact guarantees the right of a child to receive education, but that the high number of young people who are not attending school are proof that the implementation of compulsory school attendance in effect violates this right. Tada also refers to the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that ‘the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration’ (Article 3:1). Tada interprets this to mean that parent and child have the legal right to agree together to pursue home education. Kugai (2006, A7), who produces the ‘Homeschool Himeji’ website and newsletters, differs from those above by claiming that the School Education Law means that parents or guardians are legally bound to see that their children attend school, ‘but there is no provision of the law directed at children themselves, stating that children must attend a school to get an education… if a child does not fit in with a school or if a child does not like attending school, other ways of learning outside of school can be done. So, homeschooling is DEFINITELY NOT illegal in Japan’.
Preparations for a Legal Battle
Despite the legal posturing described above, so far, no families choosing alternative education have been taken to court for their decision, and so nobody involved in alternative education at the grassroots level is suggesting making a legal stand for their rights. Should a legal battle ever become necessary, however, one group is positioning itself to take it on. This is the Japanese branch of the American ‘Home School Legal Defence Association’ (HSLDA). HSLDA was founded in 1983 and was instrumental in establishing homeschooling rights in the United States, where it now employs a full-time staff of more than fifty people (Stevens, 2001, 178). The Japanese branch was founded in 2004, and its legal counsel is the prominent Japanese lawyer Sasaki Matsuo. The American branch of HSLDA stands ready to use its considerable legal clout to back up its ‘little brother in Japan’ if necessary (Church and Home Educators’ Association, 2006b).
The Second Challenge: Social Stigma and Socialization
‘The nail that sticks out is hammered home’, says the oft-quoted Japanese proverb, referring to the fact that it is not easy to be ‘different’ in Japanese society. So with school enrolment figures of over 99.9% (MEXT, 2005b), what happens to families who ‘drop’ or ‘opt’ out of the compulsory education system?
At the Church and Home Educators’ conference I attended (2006), there was much informal talk about how church schools and homeschooling families are perceived. One woman said that during her first three years of homeschooling her children, she dared not take her children to the park during school hours, for fear of facing people who might disapprove of her choices: everyone listening nodded in understanding.
A homeschooling father writes of what he calls ‘MUST-GO-TO-SCHOOL-SYNDROME’, and says that ‘dropping out from schooling seems that something like dropping out from Japanese Society itself [sic]’ (Yoshii, 2007), citing this as one of the big issues his family faced when they made their decision to opt out of compulsory education.
The Pastor of Church School C, featured in Chapter Five, said that he feltmurahachibu, literally ‘thrown out of the village on all eight counts’ – completely socially ostracized – because of choosing to start a school within his church. Children in this school also said that they disliked being perceived as school drop-outs, when in fact they had actively chosen to go to church school – they felt that society at large has no concept at all of people ‘opting out’ of the system.
In her studies of school refusers, Yoneyama (2000, 81) uses strong language to describe the stigma they face: ‘…not attending school is regarded not only as “abnormal”, “wrong” and “shameful”, but directly challenges two of the most fundamental systems of contemporary Japan: the “school faith” and the ideology of Japaneseness’.
In a society so highly focused on education, it is unsurprising that those choosing alternative education feel themselves to be misunderstood. Internet discussion boards focus not only on how to get round school officials in order to remove children from the compulsory system, but also how to convince spouses and in-laws of the wisdom of such decisions. To even consider alternative education in Japan is to ‘think outside the box’. And reports from other countries also offer little encouragement about a rapid change in public awareness or support. Rothermel (2000, 5) studied 1000 home-educating families in the UK over a three-year period, and says that there ‘the most cited “problem” with home-education was “other people’s opinions”’. Stevens (2001, 180), who undertook a nine-year-long study of homeschooling in the United States, reports that when he asked a group of homeschooled children what they would like to see addressed in a book about homeschooling that wasn’t covered in the national media, the general consensus answer was summed up by one voice which said, ‘“tell them we’re not socially retarded”’. This is despite the fact that there are now over a million homeschooled children in the United States (Princiotta and Bielick, 2006, iii).
Social stigma or misunderstanding, then, is a fact that those involved in alternative education have to either choose to put up with, or work to change. It may be uncomfortable to live with, but it is by no means an insurmountable hurdle.
Homeschooling critics often raise questions about ‘socialization’: does homeschooling isolate children from the real world? The same can be asked of church schools, and this is dealt with in greater detail in Chapter Five. One homeschooling parent is purported to have answered, ‘don’t worry, we get together with other homeschoolers twice a week so he can learn how to spit on them and treat them disrespectfully’! Another says, ‘If I were to design an environment to enhance my children’s ability to function socially, I would never propose anything resembling school!’ (quoted in Dobson, 2002, 84). I will never forget my first encounter with homeschooled children in Japan: I was amazed at their ability to communicate naturally with people of all ages – just spending a short time in their company, without even discussing homeschooling, quickly convinced me that it has great merits in the area of socialization. The family setting which is at the heart of homeschooling offers daily interaction with people of different ages; but homeschooled children also have plenty of time and opportunity to meet people from other walks of life, and most participate in a range of local sports clubs and activities, as well as in homeschooling networks. Spending most of one’s waking hours in the company of peers is actually an unnatural role foisted upon young people by the imposition of institutionalized schooling: yet as products of the school system, most of us have come to see this as normal. The daily interaction between different age groups in all three areas of alternative schooling provides a whole different way of looking at ‘socialization’ and preparation for life in wider society (See Arai, 1999, for in-depth discussion of homeschooled children as ‘good citizens’).
The Third Challenge: Preparing for Higher Education
A third challenge faced by those ‘dropping out’ or ‘opting out’ of the compulsory education system is that of the impact of their choice on the child’s longer-term educational and employment prospects. Will there be a place for them in a society famous for its ‘educational credentialism’ (Amano, 1989, 113)? The good news for these children is that it is now possible to enter or re-enter mainstream education at the high school or university level, and obtain qualifications which they may need for their future careers.
High School Entrance Requirements
In recognition of the needs of the rising numbers of school non-attendees, in 1997 MEXT eased restrictions on entrance qualifications for the Lower Secondary School Equivalency Examination (ChÅ«-gaku kentei) (MEXT, 1997). The examination takes place in November each year, and anyone who passes is qualified to apply to a Japanese high school, even if they have not graduated from junior high school. The examination is open to ‘persons who, through unavoidable circumstances, have postponed or been exempted from compulsory education…’ and those who ‘through unavoidable circumstances, have been unable to attend school’, though proof that the circumstances were unavoidable is required. The examination is also open to non-Japanese. The MEXT webpage that deals with this subject starts with a reminder that ‘elementary and lower secondary education is compulsory’, and that parents are required to send their children to school, before detailing the qualifications for taking the examination. Although school ‘drop outs’ or ‘opt outs’ may have to work hard to prove their eligibility to sit this examination, its availability paves a way back into mainstream education at the non-compulsory high school level for those who want it (MEXT, 1999a).
University Entrance Requirements
There is also a University Entrance Qualification Test (Dai-gaku Kentei, or‘Daiken’) for people who have not graduated from Japanese high school. MEXT information says that ‘successful candidates may sit for the entrance examination of whichever national, public or private university, junior college or professional training college they wish to attend’. In advertising this examination, MEXT specifically mentions that in 1999, when approximately 18,000 applicants took the ‘Daiken’, ‘roughly 80% of the successful candidates were dropouts from upper secondary school’. From August 2000, the examination was also opened up to graduates of international schools, non-Japanese, and ‘people who did not graduate from lower secondary school for whatever reason’ (italics mine) – this last phrase is significant as it means thatall students who have been involved in alternative education have the opportunity to apply to enter Japanese universities if they pass the examination. The examination covers a total of eleven or twelve subjects, and these can be taken either all at once or over a number of years (MEXT, 1999b).
Summary
As this chapter has demonstrated, alternative education presents particular legal issues which have not yet been clearly addressed at an official level, and which could portend future legal battles. For the time being, however, both ‘opt out’ and ‘drop out’ families are being allowed to pursue alternative education, albeit with some provisos from local schools and education boards. And although non-attendance at state schools carries a certain social stigma, and is likely to do so for some time to come, MEXT recognition of the need for easier access to higher education means that children who have been educated outside of the compulsory system now have the option of proceeding to higher education if they pass the necessary national examinations.
The three issues of legality, social stigma and future educational opportunities present a considerable practical and emotional challenge for the individuals and families involved, but once these issues have been faced, and the decision to pursue alternative education has been made, it is the questions of daily life that take precedence. Children and their families are warmly welcomed into the free schools, homeschooling communities, or church schools, and a new life ‘outside the system’ begins. The following chapters give a deeper insight into the roles of these forms of alternative schooling in Japan, and the experiences of the individuals involved.

Alternative Education in Other Country

Editorial note – because of constraints of space, a slightly abbreviated version of the paper is posted here. The paper is for the most part intact, minus the bibliography, list of schools, a couple of tables and footnotes…
INTRODUCTION
Japan’s Fundamental Law of Education (2006) and School Education Law (1947) state that all Japanese children must undergo compulsory education. This education is for children aged six to fifteen years old, and takes place in elementary and junior high schools. Japan has had exemplary school enrolment figures of over 99.9% for the past thirty years (MEXT, 2005b), and consistently performs well by world academic standards (MEXT, 2005c, 13,14,73; White, 1987, 2). But the system does not adequately cater to the educational needs of all children in Japan. This is evidenced both by a school non-attendance rate of 1.13% at the compulsory education level [1](calculated from figures available at MEXT, 2005c, 65,66,75), and by the existence of alternative forms of education such as free schools, homeschooling, and church schools.
Until now, academic study and public discourse about education in Japan have focused almost exclusively on what exists within the compulsory education system, and have discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the system at great length. This dissertation offers a different perspective as its starting point is outside the compulsory education system. I will identify existing alternatives to the system, analyze how and why they exist, and discuss how they reflect back on the compulsory system. For the purposes of this dissertation, ‘alternative schooling’ or ‘alternative education’ refers to any schooling or education for Japanese children of compulsory education age which takes place outside of the compulsory education system: in practice, this means education taking place in free schools, homes, or churches that have no official status as educational institutions in Japan.
Free Schools, Homeschooling, and Church Schools Cater to both ‘Opt Out’ and ‘Drop Out’ Students
My research into alternative education in Japan began on a personal level. As I investigated educational options outside the compulsory education system for my own children, I found three main alternatives available in the prefecture where I live: these are free schools, homeschooling, and church schools. Further investigation revealed that these three types of alternative education are available all over Japan. I also discovered that there were other families throughout Japan who had faced an issue that was basically the same as mine: for various reasons, they felt that the compulsory education system could not adequately meet the educational needs of their children.
Some of these families have pro-actively taken matters into their own hands to find, or create, positive alternatives to the compulsory education system, despite the fact that such options fall into a legal grey area and despite the lack of support for these measures from the educational authorities. Their decisions have also often come at considerable personal cost in terms of money, personal involvement and social stigma.  These families are best described as having ‘opted out’ of the compulsory education system, choosing never to send their children to the public schools in which the system has automatically enrolled them, or else choosing to withdraw their children because they have come to believe that the compulsory education system is not the best place for them. This group of families is small and has come into existence recently enough to have received little attention from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (hereafter referred to as MEXT), scant but growing attention from the media and the general public, and as yet very little attention from academic researchers.
There is a second group of families whose educational choices are at least temporarily outside of the compulsory system – this consists of those whose children have ‘dropped out’ of compulsory education and no longer attend the schools in which they are enrolled. This group is far larger and better known than the ‘opt out’ group, and receives the most attention from MEXT, the media, the general public, and academic researchers. Whereas the main goal of the ‘opt out’ group is to find valid and positive alternatives to the compulsory education system, the goal of the ‘drop out’ group and the alternative educational choices they have made is often, though not always, to get the children back into compulsory education.
This dissertation concentrates on defining the roles of free schools, homeschooling and church schools, and these are the themes of the three main chapters. Both ‘opt out’ and ‘drop out’ students are to be found in each of these three types of alternative education, and the effects of their different motivations and needs will be discussed throughout. It should be noted at the outset that, although accurate figures are not available, only a small minority – perhaps ten percent or less – of the children classed as school non-attendees are actually being educated in these three alternative settings.

Research and Methodology
As this dissertation will demonstrate, alternative education in Japan exists largely as a practical response to weaknesses in the compulsory education system. A thorough understanding of the compulsory system, and of academic studies about it, was therefore foundational to my research. Reading widely about alternative education in other countries, where more research has been carried out, also provided useful comparisons and fuel for thought.
Publications and statistics from MEXT furnished valuable background information about the current state of education in Japan, although little specific information about alternative education. Although it has records of the number of children it classes as ‘school non-attendees’ or ‘school refusers’, MEXT has kept no records of their exact educational paths, and appears not to acknowledge that some ‘school refusers’ have actually positively ‘opted out’ of the compulsory education system and are actively pursuing education in less conventional ways. MEXT neither recognizes nor regulates much of what goes on in alternative schooling circles, and the resulting lack of centralized, reliable statistics about alternative education means that my research here has to be primarily qualitative rather than quantitative.
MEXT papers and websites may render alternative schooling almost invisible, but there are thousands of families ‘just getting on with it’ at a grassroots level, and this is where the majority of my research has taken place. If you want to find out about alternative education, you have to find the people involved and talk with them, attend their conferences, visit the places in cyberspace where their scattered communities meet and exchange ideas, find the newspaper articles that feature them, and read the books in which they detail their experiences. This is what I did, and I found that a wealth of information is available to anyone who will take the time to track it down, though a working knowledge of the Japanese language is essential.
The topics of free schools and homeschooling receive some media coverage and are the subject of books available in any Japanese bookstore: personal testimonies of those involved are also readily available to the general public in these forms. I have lived in Japan for the past thirteen years and know many children, parents, and teachers involved in these two types of education: for the purposes of this dissertation, I felt it unnecessary to undertake specific observations of these two groups. The church schools, however, cater mainly to a small and specific group of Christian families: as a result, information about them is not readily available to the general public, except on direct request – and almost all the information is in Japanese. Because so little has been written about this group, I visited three unconnected church schools in three different prefectures, and observed a typical school day in each, asking informal questions of students and teachers in the course of the day. In the afternoon of each observation day, I spent about ninety minutes talking with and interviewing the school principal. All three principals were happy to accommodate me, and eager to show me their school and tell me their stories and beliefs. Information gleaned during these observations is included in Chapter Five, where the schools are referred to as Church Schools A, B and C. School A had 56 students (36 at the compulsory level) for the academic year starting in April 2006, and is located in a large city: School B had 29 students (19 at the compulsory level) and is located in a prefectural capital: and School C had 6 students (4 at the compulsory level) and is located in a smaller country town

[1] ‘Non-attendance at school’ or ‘school refusal’ is currently defined by MEXT (2005d) as ‘an absence of more than thirty days a year due to a refusal to attend school… refusal to attend school may be due to the following: anxiety, emotional disturbance, desire to have fun, or apathy, and may originate from problems in society, at home or in school.’

More About Alternative Learning System

Problems observed with the implementation Alternative Learning System in the Philippines and how it can be resolved.

There are a lot of problems encountered by the Bureau of Alternative Learning System in the national scene. Economic factors(poverty, budget problems), social factors(gender disparity, advocacy to collection of revenues), cultural factors(concerns to indigenous people), geographical and geophysical factors(huge size of basic education system, shortage of human resources). Most of these problems are reflected to the lowest levels of BALS.

In the case of our Bontoc District ALS, it has been observed that the coordinator/mobile teachers encounter problems on financial, human, including material resources. When facilitators initiate their plan of action,they would depend much on the support of LGU's for finances. Availing financial support sometimes create misunderstandings between facilitators, LGU personnel, and DEPED authorities due to lack of proper coordination among concerned persons. Meanwhile, our present ALS coordinator most often spends money for many ALS activities out of her pocket. It is my question why financial problem is encountered in BALS when a big sum of loan from ADB & WORLD BANK was received. Is this related again to graft and corruption?

Our present ALS Coordinator complains much on submission of "barrels" of reports. This means she has to sacrifice her classes in order to complete reports which would lessen execution of lessons and pupil/student contacts. Lack of human resources is, therefore, one problem encountered; aside from lack of trained ALS facilitators.

Another problem which our ALS coordinator usually encounter is the acquisition of equipment and materials. Sometimes, due to long line of procedures, the implementation of activities are overdue. An example is: Activities are completed before the necessary support would arrive.

To address these problems, there are suggestions to solve them. To address financial problems, the government should increase DEPED's budget for the Bureau of Alternative Learning System to enable it to continuously undertake policy/standard setting national coordination and quality assurance. To address proper coordination, ALS implementors should operationalize the Joint Circular on establishing local literacy coordinating councils and literacy implementing units. In order to address lack of human resources, BALS should hire more facilitators. ALS implementors should also intensify the parent Education Program to develop parent's functional literacy skills and to advocate the value of being educated.


Sunday, September 1, 2013

Alternative Learning


Saturday, August 10, 2013

Alternative Learning System (Philippines)


Alternative Learning System is a ladderized, modular non-formal education program in the Philippines for dropouts in elementary and secondary schools, out-of-school youths, non-readers, working Filipinos and even senior citizens. It is part of the education system of the Philippines but an alternative to the regular classroom studies where Filipino students are required to attend daily. The alternative system only requires students to choose schedules according to their choice and availability.
The program has two different schematics for conducting instruction; school-based and community-based. On the school-based program, instructions are conducted in school campuses while in the community-based program, formal instruction are conducted in community halls or on private places. The ALS program follows a uniform lesson modules for all academic subjects covering the sciences, mathematics, English, Filipino, social studies, current events among others. Delivery of instructions are provided by government-paid instructors or by private non-government organization.
Aside from schematics, the program has two levels; elementary and secondary. Students have to start from elementary level, then proceed to high school level. If a student is a graduate of elementary under a formal classroom system, the student is automatically admitted to the secondary levels depending on which year level the student stopped schooling.

Contents

Administration

Program administration is held by the Department of Education, an agency of the government of the Philippines in charged in providing education to all Filipinos. Private non-government organization may deliver the program but still under the supervision of the Philippine education agency.
After finishing the curriculum, all participants of the program belonging to a particular education district are given the final comprehensive examinations covering all subject areas in the curriculum. Successful examinees are then grouped together in a closing ceremony where they given their certificate of completion either for the elementary or secondary level.

Levels

  • Elementary
If a student has never reach the first grade, the student will be admitted in the Grade 1 level with the corresponding module of instruction given. The students has to finish all the modules for the first grade level and pass assessment test before proceeding to the next level. After successfully finishing all the modules, the students are given the comprehensive examinations prior to admission in the graduation.
  • High School
The procedure for the secondary level is the same as the elementary level. Once the student is graduated in the secondary level, he or she may opt to enroll in the tertiary level without need for attending in the formal classroom system, hence the name alternative learning system. Normally, under the education system of the Philippines, no student is allowed to enter tertiary level of education without high school diploma. The alternative system is the other path and opportunity to access vocational technology or college education in the Philippines.

Coverage

The program covers mostly among dropouts in elementary and secondary schools, out-of-school youths, non-readers, working people and even senior citizens wanting to read and write. Students enrolled under the classroom-system are disallowed to participate in the program. Age level, economic and personal circumstances are among the determinants in availing the program.

Formal education versus alternative learning system

The Alternative Learning System evolve from the non-formal education that has been conducted by the government of the Philippines. Previously, non-formal education was mostly concentrated in instructions in livelihood skills training with basic reading and writing incorporated in the module. Under the current system, skills training and livelihood training have been excluded and established as a separate education system. Skills training had become a stand-alone program with Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Philippines) taking charge of the program.
The Alternative Learning System is a way for the informal and busy students to achieve elementary and high school education without need of going to attend classroom instructions on a daily basis just like the formal education system. Secondary education has now become a prerequisite in vocational technology and college education in the Philippines. Livelihood trainings, however, do not need formal or non-formal education in the Philippines.

www.deped.gov.ph/index.php/bureau-alternative-learning-system