Press Release
May 17, 2011

ANGARA: GOV'T INVESTMENT IN EARLY LEARNING
TO YIELD HUGE BENEFITS

The Early Years Act, near passage in the Senate, will institutionalize learning from ages 0-6 years old, which studies have found to be the most crucial years for brain development and where 50% of learning functions develop.

Senator Edgardo J. Angara, the bill's sponsor, said this is an wise investment and will yield huge benefits for the country's education and human capital development.

He explained that under the total budget of the Department of Education, Php2.3 billion is allotted for pre-elementary education. This money would be channeled into existing day care centers, early learning centers and its public kindergarten program.

"There are about 49,000 daycare centers all over the country, independent from the public school system with free-standing buildings dedicated solely to child care," he said.

According to Angara, chair of the Senate Committee for Education, Culture and the Arts, the goal of the Early Years Acts it to shift the existing day care centers to more learning-oriented institutions. Since these day care centers are handling more than 100 children, class sizes need to be made smaller to facilitate better learning

"This proposal is a rationalization and restructuring of our resources to accommodate the expected number of children. Each early childhood center would need about Php2 million, including the training and operational costs," he said.

Senator Sergio Osmena further proposed that an additional P500 million be added to the existing P500 million alloted for early learning, sourced from the National Budget, since the DepEd's mandate does not cover the ages 0-4. This then raises the budget for early learning to P1 billion.

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