Investments That Keep Paying Dividends

When it comes to education, Filipinos are mournful optimists. The silent grief that washes over the national psyche about the inadequacy of the public school system, once touted as the best in Asia, almost always comes with attendant hope that in this generation or the next, there is a way to recover lost ground, lost glory.

It is a fact: quality education is expensive. In societies where education is free from prep school to college, somebody is picking up the tab for books, teachers, science laboratories, sports and arts complexes— the government.

In a country where the most basic of human needs cannot be adequately met by public funding, somebody else is footing the bill— parents, and increasingly and to a large extent, corporate foundations and the international donor community.

In this part of the developing world, scholarships, IT and research grants abound, paving the way for the select few to make it big, to make their way into the highly competitive global academic sphere.   

We grieve then we rejoice. But how much of the felicity and the triumph of the few are proportional to the collective grief of the silent majority who have to make do with an educational system that is begging for reform at the core?

The Ayala Corporation is seeking to level the playing field, so to speak, to give the next generation a fighting chance—not through dole out or availment by a select few, but through mass dissemination of quality educational opportunity.

"Ayala believes in the potential of the Filipino youth to succeed. We know that given sufficient infrastructure, enough guidance and mentoring, they have what it takes to learn and apply these skills well," says Ayala Foundation president Vicky Garchitorena.

GILAS: Investing in infrastructure

In the recently conducted National Achievement Test, only eight public schools scored higher than the passing mark of 75 percent.

This is hardly surprising for a country that spends only approximately $64 per student per annum on secondary education. Comparatively, the United States spends $7,500 on average per student, while Singapore invests $5,000 for each student yearly.

If the scenario is scary to individuals and families, it is even more alarming for private firms who will absorb these students into their workforce in the future. According to studies, less than two in every five public high schools have computer laboratories and only one in ten of these schools with laboratories are connected to the Internet.

The Ayala group—in partnership with other institutions and individuals—is seeking to address this inadequacy by providing a computer lab with Internet connectivity for each of the 5,789 public high schools in the Philippines.

"Computer labs in schools provide the tools for computer training, which prepares high school students for jobs in the fast-growing business process outsourcing industry and other fields requiring basic computer skills. Computers and Internet access facilitate networking among schools and promote the sharing of teaching modules, the standardization of material and teacher training," explains Garchitorena.

GILAS, which stands for Gearing-up Internet Literacy and Access for Students, is a consortium of private corporations and foundations working alongside the Department of Education (DepEd) and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to provide Internet access to all public high schools.

Launched in January 2005, the members of the consortium include Apple Philippines, Bayan Telecommunications, Digital Telecommunications, Innove Communications, Smart Communications, Integrated Microelectronics Inc., Intel, Microsoft, IBM, SPI Technologies and the Commission on Information and Communications Technology.

Joining them are civic and donor organizations, such as the Philippine Business for Social Progress, the American Chamber of Commerce and the Makati Business Club, and media partners GMA Network and The Philippine STAR.

The estimated cost of setting up computer labs and Internet connection to all public schools nationwide is $28 million, or $2,000 each for schools with existing labs and $6,000 for schools with nothing at all.

To date, GILAS has hooked up to the Internet 1,184 public schools nationwide and aims to cover all 5,789 schools nationwide by 2010. The biggest beneficiary so far is Quezon City, which early this month celebrated the achievement of having all of its 46 public high schools connected to the Internet.

In each of these schools, GILAS provided ten computers and unlimited free Internet usage for a year, basic training for teachers and administrators on networking and resource mobilization and the formulation of basic curriculum, as well as maintenance.

GILAS will provide continuous monitoring and evaluation of schools throughout the implementation of the project and incentives will be given to schools to ensure that computers are maintained and use of the Internet is optimal and according to guidelines.

It is an ambitious project, no doubt. But Garchitorena says that GILAS has been getting its share of sponsors, particularly from successful overseas Filipinos who want to help their country of birth.

Even local government units are getting in on the act. GILAS partners with local government officials to provide counterpart funds to speed up the Internet connection of public schools in their localities.

Connecting the first 1,000 schools was relatively easy, because they started with schools with existing computer laboratories and are not too far from urban centers, thus the Internet connections were easily provided.

"But it will get tougher as you go down the list because we will be going to public schools that are not accessible and many do not even have electricity," Garchitorena says, citing the example of the Iguig public high school up in the mountains of Cagayan. For Iguig, GILAS used wireless technology developed by engineers from the University of the Philippines to connect the school to the nearest hub.

CENTEX: Investing in young minds

Employers lament the quality of graduates that enter the workforce every year. Educators bewail the competencies of high school graduates who enter university each term. It was as if we don’t know the root cause of the problem. Two decades ago, American educator and author Robert Fulghum said it best in his bestseller: "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten." Unless we do something about the state of basic education, the visious cycle will continue.  

Ayala’s take on this is to make public elementary education at par with the best that private schools can offer. In 1998, the first Center for Excellence (Centex) was established in a public elementary school in Tondo, Manila.

Supervised by the Ayala Foundation, Centex equipped the school with facilities found in the country’s best private schools, hired and trained teachers in the primary level, reworked the curriculum and selected bright children from poor families to be enrolled in the school.

Centex also provided allowance for transportation, uniforms, lunch, and books as well as support programs for parents such as counseling and skills training.

Another Centex school opened in Bauan, Batangas in 2000. Today, there are 525 children enrolled in the Manila campus and 533 in the Batangas campus. Three batches have since graduated from Centex Tondo and one batch from Centex Bauan.

The dream of the Centex project though is much larger than the current scope of the two schools and students they can accommodate. It hopes to replicate the project in as many public schools as possible and build a new generation of Filipinos well versed in academics and exposed to culture, sports and the arts, a new breed of citizens rooted in Filipino culture who know their potential and the role they can play in the local and global community.

"Perhaps the greatest lesson that Centex wants to instill in its students is the power of hope and change: hope in their abilities and the desire to make a difference by using their gifts to benefit others," says Centex director Carol Atacador.

TEXT2TEACH: Investing in innovation

Currently there are 41.7 million mobile phone owners in the country, or a mobile penetration rate of 47 percent of the population. Give it to the Filipino to find creative uses for the cellphone, from communicating with relatives and friends overseas through text messages to selling cellphone loads in the neighborhood variety store.

Give it to the Ayala group though to channel the Filipinos’ delirious penchant for texting to a worthy cause. In May 2003, a consortium of Philippine companies, including the Ayala-owned Globe Telecom and Nokia Philippines, introduced the highly innovative Text2Teach program in public schools.

Text2Teach is a project under the auspices of the BridgeIT program, a global initiative of the International Youth Federation, Nokia, Pearson, and the United Nations Development Programme. It aims to narrow the educational divide between nations by improving the teaching of basic education in developing countries through wireless digital connection.

The methodology is simple: A teacher sends a text message to a dedicated Globe number to order educational video materials, pictures, text or audio files. Dream Cable downloads the materials to a Nokia Media Master, a multimedia box attached to a 27-inch television inside classrooms. Then the teacher uses the material to teach the class.

There are 334 video modules in the electronic library and 480 lesson guides for teachers on topics generally discussed in the science and math classes of Grade 5 and 6 pupils. Considering the dire lack of textbooks and education materials in the public school system, this is a much welcome bonus.

Three years into the program, and with funding support from USAID, Text2Teach is now in 202 public elementary schools nationwide—including 118 public schools in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM)—directly benefiting 920 teachers and over 32,000 pupils.

The goal, says Jeffrey Tarayao, head of community relations and social responsibility of Globe Telecom, is to bring the program to as many schools as possible and pool the expertise and commitment of as many companies to expand the reach of this innovative text-based approach to education.

In May this year, Text2Teach was a finalist in the Stockholm Challenge in Sweden, the world’s leading prize for entrepreneurs who use information and communications technology to increase economic growth.

Currently, the Ayala Foundation is the lead convenor of the Text2Teach consortium. Globe Telecom powers the SMS network and provides the phones to teachers and schools, while Nokia Philippines provides the Nokia Media Master and technical support, Seameo Innotech crafts the lesson plans, Dream Cable houses the educational videos and beams them to schools, Chikka Asia developed the SMS interface to the cable system for video requests while DepEd provides coordination within the public school system.

Truly, it takes a village to raise a child—in this case, a global village is raising a new generation of Filipino children.