DESPITE increasing commitments and various programs to integrate information and communications technology in basic education, the mechanisms necessary to do so remain to be underdeveloped, the Department of Education admitted.
“While more secondary schools now have computers, student-to-computer and teacher-to-computer ratios remain extremely poor,” said Education Secretary Jesli Lapus during Thursday’s opening of a two-day conference titled “The Philippine Education Roadmap: Building the 21st- Century School System.”
The conference gathered around 500 education stakeholders from both public and private institutions to identify the challenges encountered by various sectors in today’s educational setting.
Lapus admitted that at the elementary level, computer penetration is “negligible” based on the latest estimates.
“Computer penetration [is] at one computer for every 25,000 elementary pupils and one for every 728 elementary-school teachers. Our high-school penetration is at one computer for every 111 students, and one for every three high-school teachers,” said Lapus.
In addition, he noted that software availability in schools consists mostly of office software or productivity tools and are limited to those for English and only a few for music and arts classes.
“Although the current curriculum advocates the innovative use of ICT to make learning more interactive, inrterdisciplinary, collaborative and authentic, there is as yet no nationally prescribed technology-enhanced curriculum,” he said.
According to the Foundation for IT Education and Development, 58 percent of the country’s schools reported that less than half of their faculty have undergone computer-related training.
In the same survey, around 12 percent reported to having no computer training at all.
Business Mirror
October 28, 2006
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