SPIS Gets Ready for DepEd’s ‘Bridge Program’

RIYADH, 3 June 2004 — The Second Philippine International School in Riyadh (SPIS) has said it will adopt the Philippine Department of Education’s (DepEd) “Pre-Secondary Bridge Program” this schoolyear.

Marylin Rosca Fredeluces, chair of the SPIS governing board, said the program will be adopted “in view of the growing needs of enhancing the capacity of each student to benefit from each curriculum level.”

Also scheduled to be implemented in public schools in the Philippines this year, the program adds an extra year between Grade 6 and first year high school for incoming freshmen who are found to be deficient in elementary English, Science and Math subjects.

Education officials said the extra year will give such students time to improve on their English, Science and Math before they can proceed with the regular four-year curriculum.

Seventy percent of incoming freshmen are estimated go through the five-year curriculum, based on “diagnostic tests” conducted in the past two years by the Department.

“We are having first year high school students who can’t cope with the demand of the high school curriculum,” Corazon Echano of the DepEd’s curriculum development division had earlier been quoted by the media in Manila as saying.

“Our objective is to prepare them for the high school curriculum,” she said.

Although the program is mandatory only for public schools, a number of private schools have announced their intention to adopt it. “This program will enable the students to attain competencies in Math, Science and English. It was so designed to connect the gaps or the learning difficulties of each student during his previous level,” said chairwoman Fredeluces of SPIS.

In preparation for the program, SPIS teachers were required to attend workshops, with coordinators Anthony Mesina and Danilo R. Jarina conducting the orientation lectures.

Mesina and Jarina had earlier been sent home to attend a seminar on the program.

During the workshops, Cornelio I. Icaonapo and Evelyn Noman, assistant principals, discussed lesson planning, uses of specification and test construction.

School principal Epifania B. Bagalawis said that with the seminars attended by the teachers, SPIS students will be much better as they will learn more. “We always think of more creative, responsive and strategic ways to address issues among, and concerns of , our students because we want to bring out the best in them,” she said.

As drawn up by the DepEd, students who are required to go through the bridge class will have to pass all three subjects before they could proceed to first year.

The bridge program is nothing new in the Philippines. For some years until 1973, all elementary graduates had to go through the Seventh grade before proceeding to the regular curriculum.

With the current six years in elementary school and four in high school, Filipino students are said to be at a disadvantage compared to most countries in Southeast Asia, which have at least a 12-year basic education program.