In the first decade of the Indigenous Peoples Education (IPEd) Program, the Department of Education (DepEd) was able to reach and serve 2.529 million IP learners in 42,176 public schools nationwide.
In 2011, the agency -- through DepEd Order 62 series of 2011 or the National Indigenous Peoples Education Policy Framework -- officially commenced the institutionalization of the IP Education Program in 2011.
Formulated after several consultation sessions with IP leaders and elders, the policy adopts a rights-based approach and directs the implementation of an education that is anchored on the social and cultural context of IP learners.
Senior Technical Assistant and Indigenous Peoples Education Office (IPsEO) Head Maria Lourie Victor explained that the IPEd program is DepEd’s response to the right of indigenous communities and indigenous learners to an education that is responsive to their context.
“It respects their identities, and it values and promotes their knowledge systems, and their competencies, and the values that are important to them, and of course, the other parts of their heritage,” Victor said.
The IPEd, Victor explained, was a “product of the dialogue of DepEd and IP communities trying to find common ground so that the advocacy, for what is now called Indigenous Peoples Education, could move forward.”
Higher enrollment
Despite the extreme impact of the pandemic on IP communities, DepEd said that the enrollment of IP learners in public schools for School Year (SY) 2020-2021 reached 98.49 percent of previous SY in January 2021 from the 83 percent initial figure in September 2020.
Continuing initiatives
DepEd said that some of the continuing initiatives for IP learners to experience culture-responsive education include the contextualization of lesson plans, use of the local language for teaching, and having elders as teachers and mentors.
Other initiatives include using the ancestral domain as a classroom, establishing IPEd Senior High School, hiring more teachers who know the knowledge and the culture, and delivering more facilities.
In order to sustain IPEd in schools in SY 2021-2022, DepEd aims to have additional Program Support Funds (PSF).
This is to ensure learning continuity through continued contextualization of learning resources and COVID-related materials, orientation of new teachers and school heads assigned to schools in IP communities, and enhancement learning delivery modalities.
DepEd also plans to support long-term community development through education initiatives that can promote responsive and pandemic-relevant indigenous community knowledge, like indigenous farming and health systems, through the rural farm schools, senior high school offerings, and similar initiatives.
“And so moving forward, we continue with our journey of solidarity with indigenous communities so that together we are able to care for our IP learners as they grow into the future,” Victor said.
The IPEd Program also seeks to align with the call of UNESCO that all curricula are to have education for sustainable development as its core by 2025.