Does local financing make primary schools more efficient : the Philippine case

In the highly centralized system of the Philippines, local funding provides the only source of flexibility to meet specific and urgent needs. The government in Manila, which pays all teacher salaries, finds it easier politically in times of fiscal belt-tightening to cut recurrent costs. Although local funds are a relatively small percentage of the education budget, they make an important contribution to covering maintenence and operating costs. The total cost of education per student also appears to lower in schools with greater local financing. Administrators and teachers have greater incentive to be cost-effective when forced to consider the effect of their behavior on the people who live and work in the local community. The policy implications of these findings for the Philippines, as well as other developing countries, are important. They strongly suggest that decentralization will increase efficiency. Without an increase in local funding, the quality of primary education will suffer.Teaching and Learning,Gender and Education,Primary Education,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Business in Development

Student performance and school costs in the Philippines'high schools

A key consideration in the policy debate on the appropriate role of private schools in predominantly public school systems is cost effectiveness. The questions are: Do private school students learn more than their counterparts, and is it more or less expensive to educate students in private schools? Taking selectivity into account, the private schools show a significant edge over public schools in both English and Pilipino. Public schools, on the other hand, had a slight advantage in mathematics. A comparison of cost per student reveals a substantial advantage for private schools: public schools in the Philippines spend on average roughly twice as much as private schools. These findings strongly suggest that private schools are an efficient purveyor of secondary education in the formulation of policy measures that could threaten the existence of such schools.Teaching and Learning,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Gender and Education,Primary Education,Educational Sciences

From Vertical to Horizontal Empowerment of Women (in) Peace and Security: Toward a Feminist Perspective of Human Security

Human security, a people-centered approach to security, typically seeks to examine vulnerabilities and identify ways of protecting people from threats. However, people are not perennial victims—they also have agency and are capable of acting on their own. This study looks at how the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda has created both the discursive and actual spaces for women\u27s agency, particularly in the case of women\u27s civil society organizations (CSOs), as illustrated by their work on the ground. This chapter investigates how the Gaston Z. Ortigas Peace Institute (GZOPI), Sulong Peace, and Women Engaged in Action on United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (WE Act 1325) have been able to shift their strategies from vertical empowerment to horizontal empowerment based on their experiences of assisting grassroots women\u27s groups in peacebuilding work during the COVID-19 pandemic

Grounding the International Norm on Women, Peace and Security: The Role of Domestic Norm Entrepreneurs and the Challenges Ahead

One of the gaps in the study of international norms is the process by which they are institutionalized and accepted at the national level. As the international norm negotiates its way through various national (and even grassroots) levels, a point of inquiry would be how domestic norm entrepreneurs have enabled its localization. This study looks at the narrative of a loose network of peace and women’s human rights groups that worked together to localize United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on women, peace and security in the Philippines. Specifically, it reviews how the network evolved to become a domestic norm entrepreneur within the context of the creation of the Philippine National Action Plan on the implementation of UNSCR 1325 and the initiatives it took to localize the norm in the national arena. Within this frame, this study argues that the network continues to evolve as it responds to current and unfolding realities of peace and women’s human rights in armed conflict situations. Particularly, as domestic norm entrepreneur, the network is trying to transcend the usual top-down strategy of grounding an international norm and is now shifting gears toward the value of bottom-up approaches in order to achieve desired results at the grassroots level

Learning Motivation: Strategies to Increase Students' Engagement in Online Learning at San Sebastian College-Recoletos, Manila

The objective of this study is to be able to find ways or the best strategies in teaching that will motivate students to exert effort in their studies, considering the present conditions in this pandemic period. A quantitative method was used to define the study's objective, where two sections of Psychology students who took up Science 101 and Science 104 were chosen as respondents to answer the survey questionnaire through google forms. The purposive sampling technique was also employed since these students can appropriately answer the queries sent to them. The Likert scale method was used to measure the students' level of agreement, with the 5-point range, where the results were collated and analyzed.  The research result finds several strategic activities such as report enhancement, online debates, virtual experiments, discussion and updating of recent findings, and the creation of infomercials that truly captured their interest and attention. This study made use of several references and tables in order to support the results obtained. The researcher recommends that there should be effective and efficient motivational activities to sustain student engagement. The researchers, who are also educators, have agreed to continuously upgrade the newfound motivational activities to encourage more students to study well even in an online setting, thus giving more opportunities for better achievement in education