MANILA, Philippines – Voting 22-0, the Senate approved on 3rd and final reading a measure which seeks to institutionalize alternative learning system in every city and municipality around the country.

Senate Bill 1365, or the proposed Alternative Learning System (ALS) Act, was the first measure to be approved under a hybrid set-up at the chamber.

SB 1365 defined ALS as a “parallel learning system” to the existing formal eduction, seeking to expand the ALS program under Republic Act 10533 or the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013. (READ: Catching up on ALS: Challenges of a ‘parallel system’)

It seeks to provide more opportunities to those who cannot access formal education due to economic, geographic, political, cultural, and social barriers. (READ: All eyes on ALS, ‘centerpiece’ of basic ed under Duterte)

Under the proposed measure, lessons will be done at the designated community learning centers (CLC) in cities and towns. To augment the number of CLCs, public schools under the Department of Education may be used when there are no classes.

The bill allows DepEd to utilize appropriate learning modes, such as: modular instruction, digital learning, face-to-face sessions, radio or television-based instructions, and workshops.

The bill seeks to create the proposed Bureau of Alternative Education, which will serve as the focal office on ALS programs under DepEd. In 2016, the bureau on ALS was dissolved and its functions were absorbed by other DepEd bureaus.

“The ALS Act is, in its very essence, a bill about second chances. It is a bill about providing opportunities for a better life to our fellow Filipinos who have fallen into hard times,” Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, the principal author and sponsor of the bill, said of its approval.

“If every city or municipality will have an ALS Community Learning Center, we will easily achieve and give quality education to every Filipino who were deprived of the opportunity to finish their studies,” he said in Filipino.

SB 1365 would mandate the budget department to create teaching positions for ALS teachers to further expand the program. In 2019, there were more than 738,000 learners enrolled in ALS, taught by 10,214 learning facilitators around the country.

In 2018, World Bank’s Takiko Igarashi said the current ALS program is “not fully effective,” due to lack of learning modules and a low participation rate. Igarashi said then that the education department needed to improve ALS’ program design and encourage more out-of-school adults to enroll in the program.

At the House of Representatives, the counterpart measure is pending with the committee on basic education and culture.

The Senate on Monday also passed resolutions supporting the balik-probinsiya program and honoring the late senator Heherson Alvarez, who died of coronavirus. – Rappler.com