ABS-CBN Bayan Foundation

Feature Articles

The Daily Tribune

Life!

September 24, 2010

BIG STEP FOR EDUCATION

By Lou Hernandez

All the country’s ills is rooted in education – or the lack of it. Pick any particular problem that the country has – poverty, disease, overpopulation, joblessness – and most likely, it stems from lack of education, which equates to lack of opportunities for most Filipinos.

Although most schools encounter the same problems every year, optimism runs high among concerned sectors. In fact, ABS-CBN Bayan Academy, Rex Book Store and the Knowledge Channel recently launched the Excellence in Education Transformation Awards (EETA), which aims to recognize efforts of schools that innovate and achieve expected outcomes leading to improvements in the quality of their education programs and offerings. This award is very timely as most schools have been quartered to the same system due to lack of funding or sometimes creativity among its leaders.

It also recognizes the efforts of individuals and institutions that have led the change to improve the quality of education in the Philippines through collaborative partnership.

“The EETA will motivate schools to pursue academic excellence and efficient school administration. The winners will exemplify transformation – in the sense that it refers to the ability of the school to innovate and manage changes, to improve and turn around a difficult situation and to upgrade or uplift education standards,” said Dr. Eduardo Morato, Jr., ABS-CBN Bayan Academy president.

Morato adds: “The EETA is a coming together of people, institutions and organizations that are committed and dedicated to the program.”

All basic education schools nationwide are eligible for the EETA, which will have award categories such as Top Award for Educational Transformation; Excellence in Educational Transformation Award (Sectarian/Religious small category; Sectarian/Religious big category; Sectarian/Diocesan small category; Sectarian/Diocesan big category; Non-Sectarian small category; Non-Sectarian big category; and Government category).

The latter is most coveted as it was aptly named the Oscar M. Lopez Leadership in Educational Transformation Award to be given by the Knowledge Channel. This award goes to individuals/organizations that show the qualities of collaborative efforts that paved the way for the accomplishment of their transformation. A separate screening process and criteria were set for this award.

“As tribute to our chairman Oscar M. Lopez, who has served both as an inspiration and a driving force behind the Knowledge Channel’s success in helping improve Philippine public education, KCFI is launching the Oscar M. Lopez Leadership in Educational Transformation Award,” says KCFI president Rina Lopez-Bautista.

“Keeping true to our mission of educating and empowering learners through media, we hope that through this Award, more and more sectors of society will actively part in transforming Philippine education,” she said. Qualified for the OML award are individuals (private or public) and organizations (sectarian or non-sectarian) engaged in advocacy work for education in the Philippines. These may or may not be based in the Philippines but should only have Philippine educational entities as beneficiaries.

“I would like to encourage like minded individuals to do the same. There’s so much to be done to help the country. And in order to do that, we need a scalable, replicable and reachable solutions. We believe that this could be replicated by individuals as well,” Lopez-Bautista says.

Joining in this project is Rex Book Store. “As the leading publisher in the Philippines, Rex Book Store has partnered with schools in teachers’ development and curriculum design that aims for sustainability and relevance of their school systems. Like Bayan Academy, Rex Book Store is also an advocate of whole brain learning philosophy and innovation,” said Don Timothy Buhain, COO of Rex Book Store.

Nominations for the EETA and the OML Leadership in Educational Transformation Award are now being accepted. The awarding will be held in September 2011. A cash prize of P300,000 and trophies await the winners in the seven categories, while the winner of the Top Award will receive P500,000 and a trophy.

For more information, call Zaida Villanueva, Secretariat, EETA, at 9203025; e-mail bayanacademy@gmail.com or zfvillanueva@abs-cbnbayanfoundation.com . Or visit Bayan Academy for Social Entrepreneurship and Human Resource Development, 2/F Calderon Bldg., 827 EDSA, Quezon City. Log on to http://www.abs-cbnbayanfoundation.com for details.