FOR the geographically challenged, BESRA sounds like a place in Iraq. Or maybe a new Disney character. It could also be an upcoming rock and roll band. It actually stands for Basic Education Sector Reform Agenda—the overarching goal of the Department of Education (DepEd) to attain functional literacy by 2015. It is now in its second year of implementation.

Getting our children to school is relatively easy; making them stay is the harder part. For any parent out there, tuition at least is predictable, even if a large sum. It is the day to day maintenance expenses plus the unexpected that drive children out of school. The answer is a combination of strategies to strengthen the holding power to at least reduce the incidence of dropouts. Thus, we have the Preschool Education Program and the School Feeding/Food for Schools Program.

There is a standard curriculum developed by the DepEd recommended for daycare centers, classes operated by local governments and nongovernmental organizations and private ones. Children are given foodstuff like fortified rice, milk, noodles and biscuits for 120 feeding days to improve their nutrition. Strong minds and health bodies, right?

The numbers continue to boggle strong minds. In 2007, the combined public and private enrolment in basic education reached 19.7 million, one percent higher than the figure in 2006. Putting it cheap at P1,000 per child, that is already P19.7 billion. There are 45,430 public schools nationwide comprised of 37,352 elementary schools, 5,078 secondary schools and 3,000 community learning centers. Costing schools at a barebone P300,000 and you do the math.

There is some good news. Year on year, there is an increase of 11.77% in the average achievement scores of students in English, Science and Math. It will take many years of consistent gains for us to bring our state of education to acceptable levels. In the meantime, the bureaucracy is being streamlined, projects are strengthened and monitored.

We wail of our deteriorating English. It is always the refrain of, “In our time, it used to be like this.” The singular cause for this are flip-flopping policies on the use of English or Filipino or even vernacular to teach kids. Legislators, academics, professionals and wisecracks have argued to heaven and hell and back. Pointless to me when Taiwan with little English and Japan with no English are the leading economies. America with English is the number one superpower and English as it is the universal language. It does not and cannot be an either-or scenario. By all means, we can be bilingual and fluent in both. The greatest legacy of our Spanish masters is our Catholic faith; from our American enslavers, English and our system of government, bastardized it may be.

A host of issues continues even with the suspension of the centerpiece CyberEd program which could have revolutionized our way of learning. To those who say we should build schools and buy more textbooks before trying out technology, imagine if we had to wait for everyone to have landlines before cellphones were allowed.

This brings to the final point of KOK teachers. KOK of course stands for karaoke. Nope, teachers are not moonlighting or quitting their jobs for a singing career. For all the dire predictions, we ask, what can we do? Simple: go out and buy a karaoke unit for our teachers. At 45 students to a class, the teachers’ voice is thinning quickly and they get tired easily having to speak at the top of their larynx. A basic device like the microphone (preferably with lapel clip) will free the teachers to do what they do best—mentor our students. All those socio-civic organizations and congressmen, we have enough waiting sheds, let’s focus resources on the key pillar in our education sector reform – our teachers. Our students are as good as our teachers are. The spring can never rise higher than its source. Innovative ideas with high impact need not be expensive. It only needs a thinking man like Director Paul Soriano at the DepEd for a solution like this and for us to act.