Quezon City is set to renew its agreement with the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) for providing accident insurance coverage to QC senior citizens. To implement the program, the city government will shell out at least P5.2 million as premium payments to the GSIS.

Under the GSIS personal accident insurance policy, the covered can claim an indemnity of P50,000 for accidental death and a medical reimbursement of P5,000. Benefits also include a P10,000 burial assistance. The insurance coverage, however, does not cover death by sickness or old age. About 170,000 elderly residents whose ages range from 60 to 80 years are expected to benefit from the program, which was first launched by the city government in 2009.

Mayor Herbert Bautista will lead city officials in re-launching the program, which has been considered a pioneering effort by a local government unit. As part of QC's continuing initiatives to promote the welfare of its elderly residents, the city also offers them volunteer work either as tutors or caregivers and free livelihood trainings to enable QC's elderly residents to become productive even in their old age. The trainings include the home production of soap, fabric conditioners and perfumed lotion. Also offered are trainings on mat weaving.

The city also provides a one-time P10,000 financial assistance and a monthly allowance to QC centenarians. They are also given exemption from the payment of parking fees in city-based establishments. The QC Office for Senior Citizens Affairs coordinates the implementation of programs and activities for the benefit of the city's elderly residents.

Better than forcing them to hold classes under a tree. As students and teachers again face a shortage of classrooms this year, one of the country’s most populated school divisions is turning to home schooling to ease overcrowding.

The Quezon City school division is placing some 10,000 students from six high schools on a home schooling program, the biggest number to be covered in a single area since the Department of Education adopted this alternative mode of teaching.

“There are 10,000 students from six high schools that will go on home study. Our city government has already allocated P20 million for that,” said assistant division superintendent Rowena Cacanindin.

Quezon City is the only school division implementing the program so far, according to Education Assistant Secretary Jesus Mateo. DepEd started the program in 2002 but there were years when it was not implemented on such a large scale.

“We’ve explained it to the parents and they understand the system. We’ve been doing it for three years (in Quezon City) and our students do well. They graduate, go to college and even go abroad,” Cacanindin said on the sidelines of a school inspection in Cubao, Quezon City, on Thursday.

Betty Cavo, also an assistant schools superintendent in Quezon City, said home-schooled students had fared well in the National Achievement Test over the past years.

Home study is one of the alternatives recommended by DepEd for schools whose enrollments far exceed their classroom space and resources, particularly those in urban centers.

Under the program, students can take their lessons at home following modules patterned after the regular curriculum and meet with their teachers only on Saturdays. They graduate with a high school diploma just like any regular student.

The Quezon City schools implementing the program this school year are Batasan Hills National High School, Commonwealth High School, Holy Spirit National High School, Doña Rosario High School, North Fairview High School and Judge Feliciano Belmonte Sr. High School.

Quezon City is Metro Manila’s largest school division, with at least 500,000 students enrolled in public schools every year.

At Batasan Hills National High School, where overcrowded rooms have been a perennial problem, school officials are aiming for a more bearable classroom-to-student ratio of 1:60 per shift by “farming out” some 3,000 students through the home study program.

President Aquino underscored yesterday the importance of kindergarten in a child’s life, saying that the “first step” in the country’s education process is also when the child’s mind is most active. In the vernacular, the President said that by enacting the Kindergarten Law, it will now form part of the basic education curricula or our K to 12 programs.

Signed into law last Jan. 20 and formally presented by Education Secretary Armin Luistro in Malacañang yesterday, Republic Act 10157, otherwise known as “An Act Institutionalizing Kindergarten Education into the Basic Education System and Appointing Funds Thereof,” states that beginning school year 2012 to 2013, all children from age five will have to undergo kindergarten, now considered mandatory before formal education. It means that all public school students, starting this school year 2012-2013, will have to go through pre-school before they begin their formal education, the President explained in Filipino during the formal presentation ceremony in Malacañang.

The Chief Executive maintained that the government’s advocacy to provide education for all remains a top priority of his administration, as this will provide the people the ability to improve their lives. He assured that the government will continue to create meaningful reforms that will uplift the quality of education in the country. With the help of DepEd, we will continue to push measures that will enable the K to 12 programs.

To ease classroom overcrowding and teacher shortage, the Quezon City school division is placing some 10,000 students from six high schools on homeschooling. This would be the biggest number to be covered in a single area since the Department of Education started this alternative mode of teaching.

One of the schools to offer homeschooling is Batasan Hills National High School (BHNHS), where overcrowded rooms have been a perennial problem. School officials said they’re aiming for a “more bearable” classroom-to-student ratio by sending some 3,000 students to home study. The ideal ratio is one classroom for every 45 students. Since BHNHS’ projected number of students is 13,450 this school year, it is going to accommodate 10,000 while “farming out” the 3,450 through homeschooling, officials said.

Under the program, students can take their lessons at home following modules patterned after the regular curriculum and meet with their teachers only on Saturdays. They graduate with a high school diploma, just like any regular student.

The DepEd was supposed to have started the program in 2002, but there were years when it was not implemented on a large scale. It has been practiced in Quezon City for three years, and city school’s division officials said the program has worked. “Our students do well,” an official said. “They graduate, go to college and even go abroad.” One wonders how everything about the QC program could be so life-changing when it has only been running for three years. But since Quezon City is now the biggest city division in the country, bigger than Manila, the capital, expect other divisions to follow.

Homeschooling is a customized or do-it-yourself educational experience, where the parents take full charge of their children’s education at home. It operates on the most obvious of premises: parents are their children’s first and best teachers, and the family is the first and foremost learning environment, the school away from school. The right of the parents to their children’s education is constitutionally enshrined. The 1987 Constitution says that “the right of parents to rear their children” is a “natural right.” Since home study is parent-centered, parents decide whether they will enroll their kids in an accredited organization, a home-school provider, or do it independently. The DepEd exercises supervisory role.

In the United States, the National Home Education Research Institute (Nheri) in a 2011 study puts the number of homeschooled population at 2.04 million. Its earlier 2009 study showed homeschoolers performing academically higher than the norm in standardized tests. “The home-school national average ranged from the 84th percentile for Language, Math and Social Studies to the 89th percentile in reading,” the report said.

But the report does not address perceptions that homeschooled children may lack the social skills that are fostered in formal education. It merely declares that homeschoolers “have interacted maturely with peers and adults.” Homeschooling has grown as a practice among upper middle-class families that tend to be so fearful of the alleged garbage their children receive in formal education. It has led to some sort of social experimentation, compelled precisely by the fear of normal social interaction that a regular school fosters. In fact, some parents resort to homeschooling because they find their children unwilling to be weaned away from them for a day in school or to play with others. Certainly, homeschooling may be viewed as merely institutionalizing the social anxiety attacks of those kids. It’s an agent of social anomie.

But what really goes against homeschooling in the Philippine setting is that it’s supervised and regulated by the DepEd, whose historically poor handling of basic education hardly inspires hope. All of the available studies about the success of homeschooling in the United States pit the performance of homeschoolers against public school students. The Nheri’s 2009 student, for example, declared, that “homeschoolers are still achieving well beyond their public school counterparts.” Regarding calls for more state regulation on homeschooling, the study concluded that the system was doing fine without more government intervention. “That’s a good reason for state governments to redirect scarce funds from regulating homeschooling to where the money is actually needed,” the study said. In short, homeschooling is good, but broader reforms are needed to solve the ills plaguing Philippine basic education.