The Department of Education (DepEd) has asked the Arroyo government to hasten the approval of a bill providing for a mandatory pre-school education in public schools which is deemed to strengthen the academic preparation of children.

Believing there should be equal opportunities for both the poor and the rich children, outgoing DepEd Secretary Jesli Lapus advocates the immediate passage of Senate Bill (SB) 2953 or the Governance of the System of Pre-School Education.

“This bill will greatly increase our students’ readiness for formal schooling.

If their first school experience will be enjoyable, this positive experience will motivate them to remain in school and complete their education,” he says.

DepEd’s proposed quality pre-school education involves adoption of a standard curriculum, a training and hiring program for pre-school day care’s teachers’ development, a nutrition and health program for students, construction of schoolrooms, and distribution of learning supplements to students.

The bill aims to expand quality pre-school education in all public elementary schools for students aged five years and above. This will reduce children’s drop-out rate at the Grade 3 level from the more than 20 percent drop-out rate in previous years.

SB 2953 is pending in the Senate’s Committee on Education, Arts, and Culture for committee report, and its Lower House counterpart, House Bill 5496, has been approved on third reading.

It is estimated that a total of 1.4 million pre-school students are already benefiting from the program. DepEd already started implementing the program even before the approval of the bill. Of this number, the majority or 970,000 are from public schools. This number of beneficiaries also accounts for a significant 31.08 percent increase in enrollment from the 740,000 students benefited in 2008.

With its implementation of the pre-school program, DepEd noted that 69 percent of 2.4 million pupils that are about to attend Grade 1 passed a readiness test. This is a marked increase from the 36 percent readiness of pupils in previous years.