The City Schools Division of the Department of Education is currently organizing the very first celebration of Teachers Day in the city on October 4, to be held at the Baguio Convention Center pursuant to Ordinance No. 3, series of 2023 that institutionalized the annual celebration of Teachers Day every first Friday of October.
City Schools Division Superintendent Zoraya Facullo said that the celebration will be participated in by some 2,234 public school teachers and 1,378 private school teachers.
She pointed out that the upcoming celebration of National Teachers Day will be the very first time that both public and private school teachers will be coming together to celebrate such a momentous occasion.
The city schools division official admitted that there are many things to celebrate this month where the division had various wins in different activities held around the country.
Based on the data from the division, the city has around 88,537 Kto12 learners enrolled in both private and public schools for the schoolyear 2024-2025 of which 61,533 learners come from the public schools while 27,004 learners are from the private schools in the city.
Facullo claimed that the total number of enrolled learners this year dropped by around 4,000 compared to last year’s enrollment.
Facullo admitted that the division is currently conducting a study on the reasons for the significant decrease in the number of enrolled learners in the various public and private schools citywide.
Under the city’s Gawad Lingap scholarship program funded by the city government, some 233 grantees availed of the initiative this present schoolyear which is deemed to be a measure that prevented students from dropping out as the P500 per month for elementary students and P1,000 per month for high school students stipend supports their other needs as they go to school.
According to her, schools have also expended their offerings allowing learners further access to education.
She announced that Crystal Cave Elementary School is now an integrated school which was recently approved to offer high school starting with Grade 7 this year.
On the other hand, Happy Hallow National High School now offers subjects in senior high school focused on farming and agriculture, the first of its kind in the city.
Moreover, Pines City National High School also opened its doors to offer the Alternative Learning System for senior high school.
Facullo emphasized that the education department continues to work tirelessly to improve the quality of education in the city’s schools where an online regional achievement test for schoolyear 2023-2024 was done by the regional office for Grades 6 and 10 learners in Filipino, Araling Panlipunan, Match Science and English
Generally, she asserted that Baguio has performed better that most divisions in the region, where it was seen that as a division, there is a need to prioritize the programs in the areas of Math, Araling Panlipunan and Sciences as the division performs poorly in these areas compared to English and Filipino.
She disclosed that the results of the national achievement test for Grade 10 for 2023 came out last February where the general average for the country indicates the low proficiency of the whole student population but the city performed the best in the Cordillera for Grade 10 while recognized as part of the top ten performing schools division in the said test for Grade 12.
The division rolled out three key programs through the initiative of the Local School Board such as the Barangay Pagbasa program and the INQskwela initiatives and training for barangay day care workers. The Barangay Pagbasa program was able to generate 487 volunteers in 86 barangay with 1,768 learners participating during the summer term last July. INQSkwela was rolled out in 20 schools allowing students to access a subscription of the digital Inquirer application through their tablets, a powerful tool for their English and Araling Panlipunan subjects. A total of 51-day care workers were trained by education supervisors on early childhood teaching strategies and classroom management principles in coordination with the City Social Welfare and Development Office. By Dexter A. See
