DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/30 May) – Children who finished kindergarten in the city’s Project Hope daycare centers are eligible for enrolment in elementary schools, the City Social Services and Development Office said Thursday.
Gina Molon, CSSDO children’s concerns and welfare social worker said that contrary to reports Project Hope kindergarten daycare centers are accredited by the Department of Education, and children from these institutions should be accepted to elementary schools.
Molon, however, said that while the problem has been “solved internally” there’s still a need for a memorandum from DepEd on the matter.
“We received calls that some children were not entertained during the enrolment because their previous school was not accredited by the DepEd,” she said.
She said students who come from the daycare centers should be enrolled in Grade 1 as long as they undergo a School Readiness Assessment test and come from a DepEd-accredited public or private institution.
She added the city’s day care centers are slowly stopping the acceptance of children five years old and above in compliance with a DepEd memorandum.
CSSDO day care technical staff Elena Gabaton said daycare centers are public institutions mandated by the city government through the CSSDO.
She said these are registered under the Department of Social Welfare and Development and have partnered with the DepEd to cater to at least 13,000 pupils in the city.
She said there are around 550 daycare centers in the city, and at least 100 Early Childhood Care Development workers who volunteered to teach children from their own homes.
She added the city has an option to activate daycare centers as a facility for pre-school education in barangays where there are no public pre-school classes managed by the DepEd.
Meanwhile, she said that if public pre-schools cannot accommodate all the five-year-olds, day care centers would be activated.
Daycare center-based kindergarten classes may be allowed if children have no access to public schools, she said.
The daycare worker can be tapped, trained, and provided with the appropriate curriculum, as long as she or he will conduct separate classes for the kindergarten children, she added. (MindaNews)
