THE KEY to learning is better reading skills. But this reading skill need not be confined to English only. The ability to read and write in any language or dialect is what is important. From this “life-long learning” or “survival” skill, one can develop the ability to “learn for life.” These are important elements for building individual competence and achievement that can be translated in the future into a competitive workforce.

Note, however, that the issue of English-language skill in the workplace is another issue altogether. At least it should be, but it often gets entangled with our plans on what to teach in our schools. We are concerned by the decline in English proficiency of our workers. But take note that Japanese, as well as Korean, Thai, and even Malaysian workers, are not required to speak in English on the factory floor. They communicate in their own native languages and they do so with competence.

The English language becomes important when workers are forced to work in situations where supervisors and managers are foreign or the work system is adapted from abroad. English then becomes the intermediate language of reference and a necessary element of communication. Because many Filipino workers are forced to work in such situations either in-country or abroad, English proficiency becomes a critical factor. But because the formal part of the language is stressed at so young an age when learning is still beginning, the ability to learn more science and math content is sacrificed. This is, in large part, why productivity among Filipino workers and managers suffers and why competitiveness, as a country trait, is low.

This bears repeating: Grades 1 to 3 are critical in the child’s learning cycle (assuming no preschooling for most public schoolchildren.) At this age, the fundamentals for literacy have to be established and the start of a reading habit developed.

SHOULD WE despair? Not yet — because while the vast majority of our public schools struggle to manage deficiencies and shortages in the system, there are diamonds in the rough sprinkled throughout that provide hope for all.

“Models-of-excellence” (MOE) schools were born out of a program called “Books for the Barrios” set up by a former Subic-based couple, Nancy and Dan Harrington, over 15 years ago. The Harringtons collected books from U.S. families, schools, and publishers (e.g. publishing overruns) and had these shipped to Philippine elementary schools to set up libraries and reading programs. In later years, Professor Isagani Cruz of Far Eastern University (and formerly De La Salle University) developed a reading program for them that focused on “words of the day” from Grades 1 to 6 to help hone a vocabulary set that would equip very young children to read.

In Agusan del Sur, Amy Ronquillo, the dynamic young principal of Pisaan Elementary School, took a poorly-performing school and transformed it into an MOE school where children are able to read well within the first year of their formal schooling. The result has led to a transformation of the school with parent involvement so high that what was once a school with a high dropout rate is now overcrowded, as parents compete to get their kids enrolled there.

In Negros Occidental, ESKAN or Eskwelahan sang Katawhan Negros (literally “school for the people”) set up district-level reading programs to improve on the achievement of pupils in schools in each of the towns. First started in the sixth-class towns of San Enrique and Toboso, the program has expanded to other towns in the province (E.B. Magalona, Murcia, La Castellana, Moises Padilla, and Silay) before being exported to the neighboring province of Iloilo (Concepcion and Ajuy).

Poor school performance was traced to a dearth of student-friendly instructional materials in most schools; inadequate skills and formal mechanisms for teachers to handle children with learning difficulties (chief among these, poor reading); and the minimal participation of the local community (i.e. parents) in local school matters.

To address these deficiencies, Grade 1 teachers in participating schools went through a 15-day rigid training on reading; para-teachers were recruited and trained to handle pupils with reading difficulties; and a pool of local trainers from DepEd developed instructional materials now being used by all Grade 1 pupils in schools in all ESKAN municipalities. The net effect: a decline in the number of slow and nonreaders in schools in all these municipalities, even within months of implementation.

Then there is the Sa Aklat Sisikat (SAS) Foundation whose program began in the Makati schools division before branching out to other cities and provinces. To date, SAS has set up reading programs for over 125,000 Grade 4 children in 525 public elementary schools. The program targets Grade 4 because it does not really teach reading; rather, it works on a school age group that already knows how to read in order to build a reading habit.