Early Care and Learning for Marinduque Kids

Studies show that the crucial stage of child development is from the time they are still in the womb up to the age of six when the brain is still developing. DepEd studies have proven that children with positive child development experience are the ones who persevere to obtain higher education, their capacity to learn and be trained having been developed.

ECCD Council Chairperson, Sec. Teresa Aquino-Oreta has championed the importance of early childhood care and development, stressing that fifty percent of a person’s ability to learn is developed in the first four years of life according to research findings, and that another thirty percent is developed by the 8th birthday.

Yet, nearly every country spends under 10% of its educational budget on the years where 50% of development takes place. As disclosed by DepEd only 12% of every 100 grade 1 pupils are ready for school.

It is a fact, however, that the number of available pre-school educators has shrunk particularly in rural areas. Barangays and municipalities have to rely on volunteer day-care workers who, more often than not, have not obtained college education. Day-care teaching is still not considered a prime occupation anywhere in the country.

The care of children is decidedly one of the priorities of the outgoing administration of Gov. Carrion.


One of the steps undertaken by Carrion is to strengthen the local councils for the protection of children from the provincial to the barangay level. Stakeholders DepEd, PSWD, DOH, NGO’s, LGUs, barangays, day-careworkers, nutrition scholars, parents and schools, thus joined hands to bring forward all issues and concerns pertaining to children’s protection, protection that includes right to development.

At present there are approximately 7,000 day-care children in 225 day-care centers in this province. Ways of addressing the needs of these children includes DSWD-assisted supplemental feeding programs, educational assistance by providing them with school bags and school supplies, donation of pairs of shoes for children in the poorest barangays.

Part of the provincial program for volunteer day-care workers require them to undergo training in integrated management of childhood diseases, knowledge in nutrition, training through an eight-week curriculum, and use of a revised day-care manual.

Early Childhood Learning Development Program

In 2007, the introduction of Early Childhood Learning Development Program, specifically designed to teach children in pre-school and kindergarten in an informative and entertaining way was undertaken by the provincial government. The program motivates the children to learn independently with lively animation, vivid videos and photos. The program is formulated to help children develop thinking skills, reading, listening and visual comprehension, analytical skills, grammar, spelling, pronunciation, memory development and problem-solving skills.

Most of all, the program provides teachers with powerful but simple-to-use tools to diagnose, track and report on day-care children’s knowledge and progress.

The package is distributed by Pisces Publishing, Inc., a pioneer in the conceptualization, implementation and establishment of IT projects in the Philippines through partnerships with DepEd, LGUs, DOST, state colleges and universities, technical and vocational schools and private schools. The package includes 8 computer book titles on reading and math, alphabet cards and puzzles, jumpstart to reading workbooks, sounds and starters workbooks, numerical and parts-of-the-body puzzles, teacher’s manual and comes with a desktop multi-media computer system.

Since 2007, forty-two (42) such learning development packages have been distributed and extensively used in local day-care centers in Marinduque with funding sourced from 20% CDF of the provincial government, re-aligned from CY-2004-2006 (ECCD) and CY-2007-2009 (Reprogrammed Information Technology for Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD), and from PDAF of Sen. Loren Legarda and Sen. Lito Lapid. Fifty-six learning development packages are set to be distributed to the day-care centers within the first-half of 2010. These altogether represents 43.5% of day-care centers served.

At present, there are about 17% of Marinduque’s population who are 0-6 years old. For the 3-year period from 2007-2010, 11% of the province’s budget devoted to community development projects (CDF) has been allocated for childhood education, considered as sound resource appropriation.


Increasing the chances of pupils not dropping out of school and increasing their chances to persevere through college may also be considered an important legacy of the Carrion administration to his constituents. Prioritizing early childhood care and development programs was expressly stated in Carrion’s 2007 executive agenda.