“God is good! 16 UPCAT passers. Our previous max was 12.”
A text from my sister, Marivic Carpio-Bernido, high school principal of the Central Visayan Institute Foundation (CVIF) in Jagna, Bohol, where she and her husband Chris employ their revolutionary “Dynamic Learning Program” (DLP).
DLP has churned out graduates who rank in the top ten (10) percent of Filipino high school students, including passers of the UPCAT (UP College Admission Test)—the most difficult in the country. One is even in UC Berkeley now for computer science.
This added achievement happily comes as we remember People Power. Indeed, the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation stresses, thus:
The state of a country's science and technology indicates its capacity to develop. By this measure, there is cause for grave concern in the Philippines. Consider science education. Poor facilities, unqualified teachers, unproductive pedagogies, and inadequate state promotion have worked against efforts to upgrade science education. Thus, the Philippines has lagged behind other Asian countries in number of scientists, volume of scientific research, student performance levels, and the quality of its universities.
Thankfully, there are some bright lights in the landscape. One is the inspiring story of the couple Christopher and Maria Victoria Bernido.
In 2002, they introduced a revolutionary way of teaching science and non-science subjects, which they called CVIF Dynamic Learning Program (DLP). A cost-effective strategy focused on strong fundamentals, it limits teacher participation by devoting seventy percent of class time to student-driven activities built around clear learning targets, aided by well-designed learning plans and performance-tracking tools. The program uses locally available teaching aids and a "parallel classes scheme," in which three simultaneous classes are handled by one expert teacher with the help of facilitators.
In designing DLP, the Bernidos wanted to show that poverty need not be an excuse to compromise on teaching and learning excellence. The results proved them right. In the years that followed, CVIF students showed radical improvement in their performance on national scholastic aptitude and university admissions tests. CVIF is a small school of only five hundred, mostly-poor students. But the significance of what the Bernidos initiated quickly spread throughout the country. The school attracted national attention, and educators from over three hundred schools visited CVIF to learn about its program.
In electing Christopher Bernido and Ma. Victoria Carpio-Bernido to receive the 2010 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes their purposeful commitment to both science and nation, ensuring innovative, low-cost, and effective basic education even under Philippine conditions of great scarcity and daunting poverty.(http://www.rmaf.org.ph/Awardees/Citation/CitationBernidos.htm) (Emphasis ours.)
And to meet increasing interest in DLP application, the Bernidos have been conducting workshops nationwide and abroad. The next one will be held on May 2-4, 2012, in Naga City, Bikol. (Pls. contact: [email protected])
For Jose Rizal reminds us: “Without education and liberty, which are the soil and the sun of man, no reform is possible, no measure can give the result desired.”