EDUCATION Secretary Jesli Lapus yesterday said the Department of Education (DepEd) has high hopes for the Basic Education Sector Reform Agenda (BESRA) as a tool that will upgrade the quality of education by "plugging the holes" in the country’s public education system.

Lapus said his administration fully supports BESRA, which was formulated by his predecessors, to "re-visit and revise all policies and systems now obtaining in the sector that hinder performance improvements."

"The BESRA program is a good program to reform the country’s public education system and enable us to upgrade the quality of education," said Lapus, adding that DepEd fully supports all requisites for its successful implementation.

Lapus explained the five critical thrusts of BESRA thus: a. school-based management, which concept includes drawing in community participation to ensure relevance and sustainability of innovations that will be implemented in the schools; b. competency-based teacher standards which covers ways and means by which teachers can enhance their contributions to improved learning outcomes. This includes the whole range of teacher preparation, from licensure through retirement, including salaries and benefits, and others.

c. quality assurance and accountability framework involving the need for national learning strategies and systems and procedures that assure conformity to standards by all stakeholders of basic education; d. early childhood education, alternative learning, and private education whose policies the DepEd has revisited to maximize their contributions to improvements in learning outcomes, and;

e. the BESRA concept and principles that argues that for policy changes to be sustained and deepened, the entire DepEd organization, its culture, ways and procedures along financial, material, technological and human aspects, must also be re-engineered and modernized.

The Australian government last year approved a P1 billion loan to support BESRA and the Support to Philippine Basic Education Reform, another innovative project of the department with financial backing from the World Bank. Lapus said the Australians have promised increased funding in the next five years to ensure completion of the program, and has also pledged technical help in strategic and building capacity as well as in strengthening DepEd’s regional and provincial offices in management, teacher training in information technology and the dissemination of teaching materials and training manuals.