MORE educational opportunities will be in store for the city’s out-of-school youth and children in the city as Mayor Mauricio Domogan approved a proposal integrating the Abot-Alam programs for OSYs in the Alternative Learning System (ALS) of the Department of Education city division office.
Abot-Alam is a convergence program aimed at mapping OSY and matching them with appropriate government, private-sector or civil-society programs that will give them opportunities for education, employment and entrepreneurship.
The mayor signed the project proposal of the city schools division under schools division Superintendent Augustin Laban III which aims to enhance the implementation of ALS by providing additional learning resources and teachers and trainers.
A funding of P1,497,500 will be provided to cover the planned activities which include the conduct of capacity building trainings, production of learning materials and modules, advocacy programs, among others.
With the program, the city schools division hopes to augment the present resources of ALS with only ten permanent teachers and insufficient learning resources which are not enough to reach the thousands of OSY target learners in the city.
According to city schools senior education program specialist Elaine Cabuag, the program will enhance the integration of ALS in DepEd’s Learner Information System, data collection and management.
It will lead to an advocacy program through the establishments of one-stop shop for basic education in all public high schools in the city and at the same time enhance the e-Skwela program to make ALS more accessible to a technologically-oriented generation of learners through Information Technology-based distance education.
It will also give opportunity to revisit the current continuing education through Accreditation and Equivalency Program to come up with relevant learning materials and equivalency assessment for ALS learners that are more harmonized with the formal basic education under the K to 12.
All the activities are scheduled for implementation from March to December this year. (Aileen Refuerzo/PIO)