DepEd Bicol says 500,000 pupils benefiting from USAID programs
About half million Bicolano pupils benefiting from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) programs will be affected after President Donald Trump freezes foreign aid globally.
Gilbert Sadsad, DepEd Bicol regional director that the USAID is assisting 500,000 Bicolano pupils specifically the ABC+ program to improve literacy specifically for non-readers and moderate readers.
Aside from the literacy program, the USAID, according to Sadsad, helped the students to recover and continue their education following the successive typhoons.
Sadsad said that the USAID program in Bicol is three years and will end this year and they do not know if the program will be continued this year.
“We don’t have any information if the USAID program will continue this year. The USAID ABC+ program focuses on grades 1 to 3 for 3 years and will end this year,” Sadsad said.
The USAID ABC+ project in Bicol supports the DepEd “to mitigate learning loss in the area of literacy and help school heads in making decisions on appropriate learning delivery modalities.
The pilot schools for the ABC+ project in the Bicol region include Albay Central School and Lamba Central School in Legazpi City and the Villa Aurora Elementary School and Parang Elementary School in Camarines Norte. Another ABC+ program is implemented in Tabaco City.
As part of the intervention, the schools will administer a rapid assessment to determine the literacy level of incoming Kindergarten to Grade 3 pupils and help teachers determine the level of support each child needs. To address the results of the assessment, each student will receive level appropriate reading materials.
Teachers and home learning partners can use the booklets to develop word recognition, comprehension, and fluency skills while also fostering a love of reading among children.
The DepEd official in Bicol said that the literacy assessment tools offered by ABC+ is a helpful tool for teachers to identify specific needs and reading levels of learners so that the teachers will give appropriate interventions. It is also crucial that the teachers and home learning partners are capacitated on beginning reading.
USAID’s ABC+ project, in partnership with the DepEd, is improving the basic life skills of early grade students in Bicol Region.
For the past two school years, USAID, through the ABC+ project in partnership with DepEd, has already distributed over 11 million copies of reading materials to kindergarten to grade 3 children in the three regions covered by the program.
Some four schools in Bicol will explore different learning modalities for the early grades through the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Advancing Basic Education or ABC+project as part of the implementation of the Department of Education’s (DepEd) Basic Education–Learning Continuity Plan (BE-LCP).
The USAID is helping students and teachers in the Bicol Region recover and continue their education after the recent typhoons last year.
Last year, the USAID donated vital educational materials worth more than P7.6 million ($136,000) to support over 18,500 students in areas hit hardest by the storms in Bicol Region following the occurrence of weather disturbances Kristine and Pepito. The agency also provided 18,600 learner kits, 8,884 early grade reading materials for kindergarten through grade 3 and 528 teacher kits for 54 schools in the Bicol Region. – BY RHAYDZ BARCIA