Synergia Reflection: Local Education Governance

 Transformative power

This is no longer a debate. Education possesses the transformative power to uplift people out of poverty.  What is subject to countless questions and debates then are the methods and interventions in concretizing that transformative power;iu.

How do we improve the quality of our education system particularly the public school system? It’s a question that invokes thoughts of cosmic proportions involving systems and cultures. Yet this is fundamentally a question that involves our deepest beliefs and noblest convictions. How do we then, as a society, assure that the next generation is better off than our own?

This question is drawn with the backdrop of horrible statistics.  Our NAT scores are horrible and the shortages of classrooms are colossal. These are the apparent problems we see but an unseen gamut feeds and perpetuate these problems.

It takes a village to educate a child

The focus of Synergia is to equip the barangay government to become powerful centers of synergy for educational development. They widen the tools for the barangay government to employ and help them connect with stakeholders.

This starts with the barangay convening an Education Summit where important issues shall be surfaced and tackled. The next step is creating the Barangay School Board, which is composed of the principal of the school/s, PTA, Social Workers, Barangay officials, Business owners, Religious sectors, Students and other stakeholders. This oversight-body outlines the intervention, mobilize resources and prioritize investments to help improve the quality of education within their jurisdiction.

Broadening participation in the school board will inevitably increase the number of perception in seeing and solving problems. This can be seen in many forms such as identifying that toothaches mainly cause absenteeism or agreeing to hold principals through community-score cards.

Leadership is key. Nothing more, nothing less.

Mobilizing people’s participation requires a visionary leadership. Great plans will end up only as that – plans. Changing things, such as increasing test results, is primarily an intimate affair of the heart. It requires unquestionable loyalty to the idea that education is the whole community’s concern – not just the DepEd or elected-officials.

This is not something out of a utopian dream. This has worked in local government units, which embraced education governance reform around the country. The only differentiating factor is leadership - nothing more, nothing less.