DUMAGUETE CITY, November 16, 2019 – Education Secretary Leonor Magtolis Briones discussed the priority initiatives of the Department of Education (DepEd) for the last three years of her administration during the Region VII management committee meeting at Southview Hotel in Dumaguete on October 31.

Speaking before the DepEd  regional and division officials, supervisors, principals, and teachers, Briones highlighted the victories of DepEd in terms of access to education which include increase of enrollment, decrease of dropout rates, and the rise of cohort survival rates.

“Insofar as access is concerned, we are doing very well. We also succeeded in bringing more learners to the Alternative Learning System (ALS),” Briones shared.

The Education Chief likewise stated that DepEd is now pivoting to quality as the Constitution  prescribes both access and quality.  She stressed that to achieve quality, the teaching style needs to be changed.

“If we pivot from access to quality, we pivot from the traditional ways of teaching to different ways of teaching,” Briones explained.

She said that  the change of content has caused a decline in the learners’ NAT performance.  She further stressed that there is a need to focus on the learners’ critical thinking.

“It shows very clearly that we should teach our learners more about critical thinking, problem solving, and applying these to practical and real life situation,” the DepEd chief explained.

Transformation of the National Educators Academy of the Philippines (NEAP)
The Secretary also shared  the transformation of NEAP towards the achievement of quality of education.

“We are going to change the content of the program of NEAP because if we want to transform the quality of learners, we have to transform NEAP.  If we want to teach the learners new things, then the teachers will have to be the first to learn new manner of teaching,” Briones stated.

She further emphasized that learning is discovering and it should be fun like playing games

“To make learning real and to understand it better, relate it to the real world and to the things that learners are interested in,” Briones concluded.

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