The City Government of Valenzuela, under the leadership of Mayor REX Gatchalian, grabs Synergeia Foundation’s Seal of Good Education Governance during the two-day virtual 14^th Washington SyCip National Education Summit, March 25-26, 2021.

Valenzuela City has been awarded the prestigious seal now for four (4) consecutive years.

With this year’s theme “Learning from Our Best to Defy Gravity”, the 14^th summit is also chaired by Mayor REX who shared how education governance works in local government units and how policymakers can “defy gravity” by taking the driver’s seat in challenging the status quo in crafting education programs in localities.

“In defying gravity, it is not just the children that must defy gravity. I really believe that policymakers like us must try to defy gravity by shaking up the status quo… Defying gravity does not happen overnight but it has to start somewhere,” Mayor REX shared.

The Philippine education setting has been heavily focused on infrastructure development and is also challenged by disengaged parents, non-consultative local school boards, the need for curriculum upgrades, and the lack of a holistic and systemic approach toward solving education issues.

Valenzuela City answers these challenges with its renowned Education 360 Degrees Investment Program in which, by the time of the program implementation in 2013, was able to reduce the number of frustrated level and non-readers in Grades 3 and 6 from 15, 842 in 2014 down to only 6,375 in 2016.

The program’s holistic and systemic package includes Facilities Build Up, Nanay-Teacher Parenting Camp, Teaching Camp, Curriculum Development, Reading Camp, K to 6 Feeding Program, Performance Incentives Program, Inclusive Learning, and Well-Rounded Balanced Students Program.

Apart from this, Valenzuela City also championed its COVID-19 pandemic response in education with its innovation of Valenzuela Live Online Streaming School.

With this innovation, Mayor REX acknowledges that the COVID-19 pandemic “turned the realm of governance upside down” where everything in the existing education playbook is not applicable -- the virus being “not just a health concern, but an economic, social, and education governance concern”.

Valenzuela Live is the City’s newest platform for education’s distance learning modality where students can watch live and pre-recorded videos of their lessons via their Facebook groups. The Valenzuela City School of Mathematics and Science (ValMaSci) serves as an offsite classroom for teachers to record their lessons.

Mayor REX also calls on local chief executives to “work with the Schools Division Office to come up with creative and innovative education solutions that would fit their terrain” and to “mobilize available resources to achieve goals and recalibrate programs”.

The Seal of Good Education Governance is awarded by Synergeia Foundation and USAID, in partnership with PLDT and Smart, to cities and municipalities in the country that have exerted outstanding efforts to deliver basic education to their constituents.

It also measures how local governments provide children with equal access to good education and is intended to help promote good governance, transparency, accountability, and efficiency among local governments.