Tuguegarao City – To address concerns on educational compliance of Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (Pantawid Program) beneficiaries, the Department of Social Welfare and Development at Field Office 02 (DSWD-FO2) conducted a 2-day consultative meeting with the Department of Education (DepEd) at Taj Hotel, Tuguegarao City on January 25-26,2017.

 

DepEd participants included representatives from the regional office as well as school heads from the various educational institutions of the province of Cagayan who cater to the Pantawid Program beneficiaries from elementary to secondary school.

 

In her opening message, Officer-In-Charge Lucia S. Alan emphasized the magnitude of change that education will contribute in breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty and her expectation that during the consultative meeting, the strong partnership forged with the institution will harmonize perceptions on the program and address lapses in the delivery of the services.

 

Heads of schools expressed their concerns, one of which is tagging children who would only show up during enrollment for the sake of compliance but would later on drop out in the middle of the school year to which Mr. Agustus Narag, the Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of the program in the Field Office, reiterated the importance of properly tagging the child as dropped out instead of not enrolled in order for a more appropriate intervention to be undertaken by the field staff.

 

Another important discussion in the group involved the formulation of a practicable package for the Out-Of-School Youth who were still within the range of 0-18 years old but who were less enthusiastic to enter formal schooling to which the DepEd responded that the Alternative Learning System Program  would have the more appropriate response.

Similar consultative meetings will be conducted with the institutional heads of the provinces of Quirino, Isabela and Nueva Vizcaya in the coming weeks of February.