Saturday, December 29, 2012
RA 6713 Public Official's code of conduct and ethical standards.
RA 6713, An Act Establishing a code of conduct and ethical standards for public officials and employees, to uphold the time-honored principle of public office being a public trust, granting incentives and rewards for exemplary service, enumerating prohibited acts and transactions and providing penalties for violations thereof and for other purposes.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://dilg.gov.ph/PDF_File/issuances/republic_acts/RA_6713.PDF&chrome=true
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Public schools in the Philippines, a situationer
Public schools need more money
inShare
Published : Tuesday, November 22, 2011 00:00
Article Views : 181
Written by : ERNESTO F. HERRERA
IT used to be that a good education meant a ticket out of poverty. For a lot of people that hope still rings true, but unfortunately those who need a good education the most are the ones who can’t afford it.
Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said that Philippine education is in “deep crisis” when he met with heads of state universities and colleges (SUCs) in the Cordillera and Ilocos regions recently.
The 2010 Annual Poverty Indicator Survey report released early this month showed that 16 percent or 6.24 million of the total 39 million Filipinos 6 to 24 years old are out-of-school youths.
The government report said the primary reason given by out-of-school youths for not attending school is the high cost of education, followed by lack of personal interest.
Abad said the nation’s children are not in school not just for academic reasons but for other reasons like malnutrition and poverty.
It’s a vicious cycle because those who can’t get a good education are likely to remain poor, and it is their poverty that prevents them from going to school in the first place.
Abad said even if children finish secondary education, they come up with poor achievement levels; and for many of them, high school is the end of the line, as their parents force them to work to help support their families.
Only 15 percent end up with a college degree and only 5 percent of them earn degrees in the hard sciences, making for a weak foundation in the whole education system, Abad said.
This is true. Those who do finish college would find that their chances of getting employed are slim. Many of the graduates our schools are producing have skills that are not employable in today’s workplaces.
According to the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, college graduates have the highest unemployment rate in the country at 26 percent.
Even the booming BPO industry, one of the major components of the services sector has a serious recruitment problem: for every 100 applicants only a small percentage—around 2 to 5 percent—are ready to be hired while the rest fail because of poor English communication and technical skills.
We have to make quality education more affordable and the only way to do this is to devote more state resources to the education system.
As senators have already started their marathon floor deliberations on the 2012 national budget bill, I hope they would find merit in making a few insertions to augment the state budget for education.
Our public schools are plagued by a lack of facilities, qualified teachers and, as already pointed out, an atrocious dropout rate.
The Department of Education said that despite all their recent efforts to fill the glaring foundational gaps, there is still a shortage of 103,612 elementary and secondary school teachers, 66,800 classrooms, 2,573,212 pieces of school furniture and 146,000 toilets.
Our education system has slipped way behind our neighbors in the region. According to the 2010-2011 Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum, the Philippines ranks a poor seventh among nine Southeast Asian nations in the fields of education, science and technology, and innovation.
In the area of primary education, the Philippines ranked 99th out of 138 countries, 69th in educational system, 112th in science and math, and 76th on Internet access. In all categories we were behind Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. We fared only better than Cambodia.
It has been close to two decades since the Congressional Commission on Education (EdCom), a joint-body of the Senate and the House of Representatives, went around the country to make a national review and assessment of the Philippine education system, and came out with a set of recommendations that sought to solve these very problems that haunt us today. I was a member of EdCom.
Since then the government has restructured the Education department with the creation of the Commission on Higher Education (Ched) and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda). It passed laws like the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers, the Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education, and the Special Program for Employment of Students. We have supposedly institutionalized funding for textbook assistance, tuition supplements and loans, scholarships, science and technology, vocational and technical training, faculty development, collaboration with private industries.
And yet even with all these good laws, policies and programs, it is clear that our education system is far from ideal. We are still a long way off from actualizing the Constitution’s mandate to make quality education accessible to all.
The problem, as always, is money. There is a huge gap between the commitments we make on paper and the investments we are making in terms of actual disbursement of funds.
We have one of the lowest allocations for education in the Asean. The 2011 budget allocations for DepEd and state universities and colleges in the General Appropriations Act show the miniscule amounts spent by the government on a per student basis. And since education is one of the most important factors that contribute toward poverty alleviation, this is also why our neighbors in the region have left us in the dust economically.
While corruption, as the President’s campaign slogan goes, could be blamed for our country’s poverty, so too can a poorly educated citizenry.
We have to put more money and resources behind our education laws, programs and policies, enough to ensure their effective implementation. Only then can our nation be the epitome of economic strength.
ernestboyherrera@yahoo.com
inShare
Published : Tuesday, November 22, 2011 00:00
Article Views : 181
Written by : ERNESTO F. HERRERA
IT used to be that a good education meant a ticket out of poverty. For a lot of people that hope still rings true, but unfortunately those who need a good education the most are the ones who can’t afford it.
Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said that Philippine education is in “deep crisis” when he met with heads of state universities and colleges (SUCs) in the Cordillera and Ilocos regions recently.
The 2010 Annual Poverty Indicator Survey report released early this month showed that 16 percent or 6.24 million of the total 39 million Filipinos 6 to 24 years old are out-of-school youths.
The government report said the primary reason given by out-of-school youths for not attending school is the high cost of education, followed by lack of personal interest.
Abad said the nation’s children are not in school not just for academic reasons but for other reasons like malnutrition and poverty.
It’s a vicious cycle because those who can’t get a good education are likely to remain poor, and it is their poverty that prevents them from going to school in the first place.
Abad said even if children finish secondary education, they come up with poor achievement levels; and for many of them, high school is the end of the line, as their parents force them to work to help support their families.
Only 15 percent end up with a college degree and only 5 percent of them earn degrees in the hard sciences, making for a weak foundation in the whole education system, Abad said.
This is true. Those who do finish college would find that their chances of getting employed are slim. Many of the graduates our schools are producing have skills that are not employable in today’s workplaces.
According to the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, college graduates have the highest unemployment rate in the country at 26 percent.
Even the booming BPO industry, one of the major components of the services sector has a serious recruitment problem: for every 100 applicants only a small percentage—around 2 to 5 percent—are ready to be hired while the rest fail because of poor English communication and technical skills.
We have to make quality education more affordable and the only way to do this is to devote more state resources to the education system.
As senators have already started their marathon floor deliberations on the 2012 national budget bill, I hope they would find merit in making a few insertions to augment the state budget for education.
Our public schools are plagued by a lack of facilities, qualified teachers and, as already pointed out, an atrocious dropout rate.
The Department of Education said that despite all their recent efforts to fill the glaring foundational gaps, there is still a shortage of 103,612 elementary and secondary school teachers, 66,800 classrooms, 2,573,212 pieces of school furniture and 146,000 toilets.
Our education system has slipped way behind our neighbors in the region. According to the 2010-2011 Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum, the Philippines ranks a poor seventh among nine Southeast Asian nations in the fields of education, science and technology, and innovation.
In the area of primary education, the Philippines ranked 99th out of 138 countries, 69th in educational system, 112th in science and math, and 76th on Internet access. In all categories we were behind Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. We fared only better than Cambodia.
It has been close to two decades since the Congressional Commission on Education (EdCom), a joint-body of the Senate and the House of Representatives, went around the country to make a national review and assessment of the Philippine education system, and came out with a set of recommendations that sought to solve these very problems that haunt us today. I was a member of EdCom.
Since then the government has restructured the Education department with the creation of the Commission on Higher Education (Ched) and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda). It passed laws like the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers, the Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education, and the Special Program for Employment of Students. We have supposedly institutionalized funding for textbook assistance, tuition supplements and loans, scholarships, science and technology, vocational and technical training, faculty development, collaboration with private industries.
And yet even with all these good laws, policies and programs, it is clear that our education system is far from ideal. We are still a long way off from actualizing the Constitution’s mandate to make quality education accessible to all.
The problem, as always, is money. There is a huge gap between the commitments we make on paper and the investments we are making in terms of actual disbursement of funds.
We have one of the lowest allocations for education in the Asean. The 2011 budget allocations for DepEd and state universities and colleges in the General Appropriations Act show the miniscule amounts spent by the government on a per student basis. And since education is one of the most important factors that contribute toward poverty alleviation, this is also why our neighbors in the region have left us in the dust economically.
While corruption, as the President’s campaign slogan goes, could be blamed for our country’s poverty, so too can a poorly educated citizenry.
We have to put more money and resources behind our education laws, programs and policies, enough to ensure their effective implementation. Only then can our nation be the epitome of economic strength.
ernestboyherrera@yahoo.com
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Steve Jobs's seven rules of success
Steve Jobs and the 7 Rules of Success
By Carmine Gallo | Entrepreneur – Fri, Oct 14, 2011 2:36 PM EDT
Steve Jobs' impact on your life cannot be underestimated. His innovations have likely touched nearly every aspect -- computers, movies, music and mobile. As a communications coach, I learned from Jobs that a presentation can, indeed, inspire. For entrepreneurs, Jobs' greatest legacy is the set of principles that drove his success.
Over the years, I've become a student of sorts of Jobs' career and life. Here's my take on the rules and values underpinning his success. Any of us can adopt them to unleash our "inner Steve Jobs."
1. Do what you love. Jobs once said, "People with passion can change the world for the better." Asked about the advice he would offer would-be entrepreneurs, he said, "I'd get a job as a busboy or something until I figured out what I was really passionate about." That's how much it meant to him. Passion is everything.
2. Put a dent in the universe. Jobs believed in the power of vision. He once asked then-Pepsi President, John Sculley, "Do you want to spend your life selling sugar water or do you want to change the world?" Don't lose sight of the big vision.
3. Make connections. Jobs once said creativity is connecting things. He meant that people with a broad set of life experiences can often see things that others miss. He took calligraphy classes that didn't have any practical use in his life -- until he built the Macintosh. Jobs traveled to India and Asia. He studied design and hospitality. Don't live in a bubble. Connect ideas from different fields.
4. Say no to 1,000 things. Jobs was as proud of what Apple chose not to do as he was of what Apple did. When he returned in Apple in 1997, he took a company with 350 products and reduced them to 10 products in a two-year period. Why? So he could put the "A-Team" on each product. What are you saying "no" to?
5. Create insanely different experiences. Jobs also sought innovation in the customer-service experience. When he first came up with the concept for the Apple Stores, he said they would be different because instead of just moving boxes, the stores would enrich lives. Everything about the experience you have when you walk into an Apple store is intended to enrich your life and to create an emotional connection between you and the Apple brand. What are you doing to enrich the lives of your customers?
6. Master the message. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can't communicate your ideas, it doesn't matter. Jobs was the world's greatest corporate storyteller. Instead of simply delivering a presentation like most people do, he informed, he educated, he inspired and he entertained, all in one presentation.
7. Sell dreams, not products. Jobs captured our imagination because he really understood his customer. He knew that tablets would not capture our imaginations if they were too complicated. The result? One button on the front of an iPad. It's so simple, a 2-year-old can use it. Your customers don't care about your product. They care about themselves, their hopes, their ambitions. Jobs taught us that if you help your customers reach their dreams, you'll win them over.
There's one story that I think sums up Jobs' career at Apple. An executive who had the job of reinventing the Disney Store once called up Jobs and asked for advice. His counsel? Dream bigger. I think that's the best advice he could leave us with. See genius in your craziness, believe in yourself, believe in your vision, and be constantly prepared to defend those ideas.
Carmine Gallo is a communications coach, a popular keynote speaker and author of several books including The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobsand The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs. His latest is The Power of Foursquare(McGraw-Hill, 2011).
By Carmine Gallo | Entrepreneur – Fri, Oct 14, 2011 2:36 PM EDT
Steve Jobs' impact on your life cannot be underestimated. His innovations have likely touched nearly every aspect -- computers, movies, music and mobile. As a communications coach, I learned from Jobs that a presentation can, indeed, inspire. For entrepreneurs, Jobs' greatest legacy is the set of principles that drove his success.
Over the years, I've become a student of sorts of Jobs' career and life. Here's my take on the rules and values underpinning his success. Any of us can adopt them to unleash our "inner Steve Jobs."
1. Do what you love. Jobs once said, "People with passion can change the world for the better." Asked about the advice he would offer would-be entrepreneurs, he said, "I'd get a job as a busboy or something until I figured out what I was really passionate about." That's how much it meant to him. Passion is everything.
2. Put a dent in the universe. Jobs believed in the power of vision. He once asked then-Pepsi President, John Sculley, "Do you want to spend your life selling sugar water or do you want to change the world?" Don't lose sight of the big vision.
3. Make connections. Jobs once said creativity is connecting things. He meant that people with a broad set of life experiences can often see things that others miss. He took calligraphy classes that didn't have any practical use in his life -- until he built the Macintosh. Jobs traveled to India and Asia. He studied design and hospitality. Don't live in a bubble. Connect ideas from different fields.
4. Say no to 1,000 things. Jobs was as proud of what Apple chose not to do as he was of what Apple did. When he returned in Apple in 1997, he took a company with 350 products and reduced them to 10 products in a two-year period. Why? So he could put the "A-Team" on each product. What are you saying "no" to?
5. Create insanely different experiences. Jobs also sought innovation in the customer-service experience. When he first came up with the concept for the Apple Stores, he said they would be different because instead of just moving boxes, the stores would enrich lives. Everything about the experience you have when you walk into an Apple store is intended to enrich your life and to create an emotional connection between you and the Apple brand. What are you doing to enrich the lives of your customers?
6. Master the message. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can't communicate your ideas, it doesn't matter. Jobs was the world's greatest corporate storyteller. Instead of simply delivering a presentation like most people do, he informed, he educated, he inspired and he entertained, all in one presentation.
7. Sell dreams, not products. Jobs captured our imagination because he really understood his customer. He knew that tablets would not capture our imaginations if they were too complicated. The result? One button on the front of an iPad. It's so simple, a 2-year-old can use it. Your customers don't care about your product. They care about themselves, their hopes, their ambitions. Jobs taught us that if you help your customers reach their dreams, you'll win them over.
There's one story that I think sums up Jobs' career at Apple. An executive who had the job of reinventing the Disney Store once called up Jobs and asked for advice. His counsel? Dream bigger. I think that's the best advice he could leave us with. See genius in your craziness, believe in yourself, believe in your vision, and be constantly prepared to defend those ideas.
Carmine Gallo is a communications coach, a popular keynote speaker and author of several books including The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobsand The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs. His latest is The Power of Foursquare(McGraw-Hill, 2011).
Monday, October 17, 2011
Friday, October 14, 2011
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
Good Governance at Cape Verde
JOHANNESBURG—A $5 million prize for good African governance was awarded Monday to the former president of Cape Verde, cited for turning his small island nation into a model of democracy, stability and prosperity.
In an announcement made in London and broadcast across Africa, the Mo Ibrahim prize committee said that during his 10 years in power, Pedro Verona Pires helped lead the nation of 200,000 off West Africa's coast out of poverty and won recognition for his human-rights record.
Last year and the year before, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation prize committee didn't award a prize, saying no leaders met the criteria for promoting development and democracy—and for handing over power peacefully.
Click on colored link to follow complete news.
In an announcement made in London and broadcast across Africa, the Mo Ibrahim prize committee said that during his 10 years in power, Pedro Verona Pires helped lead the nation of 200,000 off West Africa's coast out of poverty and won recognition for his human-rights record.
Last year and the year before, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation prize committee didn't award a prize, saying no leaders met the criteria for promoting development and democracy—and for handing over power peacefully.
Click on colored link to follow complete news.
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