Changing the education landscape is never easy. There are many red flags along the way: a big bureaucracy, an uninformed community, total reliance on DepEd, peace and order, lack of infrastructure, hunger, poverty, child labor….the list is long. Synergies chose to work with politics so that all systems could go. Politicians have the power, responsibility, and resources. Politics has two faces. Synergies looked at its good side and its potential in reforming education.
And we were not wrong! The first politician we worked with was the Mayor of Naga City, Jesse Robredo. He did not have a full grasp of the education problem. He thought that everything was going well. But when we showed him that only 4 out of 10 children could pass the National Achievement Test, he went ballistic. There was no stopping him. He reinvented School Boards, convened education summits, developed children’s workbooks, and trained teachers—all bore positive results. The reading and math scores went up and up.
Unfortunately, we do not hear much of the good politicians. Their work is eclipsed by the sins of the bad. Our views have been colored that politicians are inept, selfish, and greedy.
These are unfair to national and local leaders with the country’s interests that are above or at least equal to their own. Synergeia has about 500 education-Mayors and Governors who place the welfare of children at the core of governance. And we are fortunate to work with Senators and Congressmen who are educators at heart and by experience. Senator Sonny Angara chaired the Committee on Basic Education for many years, listened to the problems of teachers and parents, and drew up laws that benefitted them. Most of all, he made sure that as Chairman of the Senate’s Committee on Finance, education programs would get enough funding. He appreciated the need for devolving basic education to local governments and funded the education program in Iloilo province as a Proof of Concept. Congressman Kiko Benitez is our education champion in Negros Occidental and organized all the Mayors to develop an education agenda. He has engaged the community to understand their problems towards bottom-up reforms. They can both lead to a turnaround in the quality of our basic education.
They enable us to see that there is a good side to politics.
Guevara is a former Department of Finance undersecretary. She is currently the president and chief executive officer of Synergeia Foundation, a nongovernment organization for good governance.
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