Canatuan students get high marks from DepEd

High academic performance an achievement for students in mountain village

That is not the case, however, in the Canatuan Elementary School
and the Siocon National High School-Canatuan Extension – two learning
institutions at Sitio Canatuan in Siocon, Zamboanga del Norte. Students here
received an 84% rating for their academic performance from the highest-ranking
officials of the government’s Department of Education (DepEd) office in
this town. Canatuan is host to TVI Resource Development Philippines, Inc.’s
(TVIRD) copper-zinc operations and home to more than 2,000 indigenous people
from the Subanon tribe.

The rating is based on the results of the students’ achievement
tests in all subject areas like Mathematics, Science, English, Social Studies,
Home Economics, and Practical Arts.

Araceli Tomboc, DepEd District Supervisor, attributes the students’
highly satisfactory performance to TVIRD’s initiatives to promote education
in and around its host community.

She explains that most students in remote villages in these
islands have learning difficulties because of the perennial problems of lack
of school buildings, classrooms, textbooks and reference books, desks and armchairs,
and other learning materials. Those in highland schools are lucky to have desktop
computers or television sets, which are necessary learning tools in a fast-changing
world. The dearth of trained teachers and high incidences of student absenteeism
are also commonplace.

“Canatuan was no exception during the regime of the small-scale
mining here from the 1990s until early 2000s,” Tomboc adds, referring
to the years before TVIRD began operations here in mid-2004, when illegal artisanal
mining that forced even women and children to work in dangerous mine shafts
and tunnels lorded over Canatuan.

Javier Salvador, principal of Siocon National High School for
eight years, agrees. He says that given the magnitude of the problems mentioned
by Tomboc, Canatuan students would have found it difficult to achieve the 84%
rating they just received. He says he doubts whether students in other upland
villages will be able to match or surpass the feat of their Canatuan counterparts.

Tomboc, now in her 24th year of government service focusing
on the academe, narrates that the Canatuan School she used to supervise in the
‘90s was far different from the school that the children there are now
attending: “During those years the three-room makeshift school building
constructed by the Parents-Teachers and Community Association housed Grades
1 to 6 students. Those in Grades 1 and 2 were placed together in one room. This
was true with students in Grades 3 and 4, as well as in Grades 5 and 6. Each
room had only one teacher. There was no sanitary toilet and potable water supply.

“There was no library then,” Tomboc continues.
“Pupils lacked textbooks and teachers lacked reference books. Pupils did
not have enough desks and armchairs, as well as decent classrooms. Adding to
the woes of DepEd officials was absenteeism. Bigger boys and girls were asked
to help their fathers mine in dangerous tunnels. Those whose parents were farmers
were asked to help till the soil, after the forests had been slashed and burned,
or harvest the produce. Sometimes children had to cut classes because their
stomachs ached as a result of hunger; they went straight to school without eating,
as there wasn’t food to eat.”

In late 2004, a legislator, on the request of TVIRD, constructed
a concrete school building in Canatuan. This was followed in 2006 by a three-room
temporary building donated by Siocon Subanon Association, Inc., the legal representative
of the ancestral domain title holders. Then the company built a one-room school
building, and gifted the children with textbooks and reference books.

TVIRD subsequently constructed another one room school building
for secondary school students, another building for their library, and a Science
room. The company also donated several desktop computers for elementary and
high school students. A school bus was then purchased to service the growing
number of pupils in the elementary and secondary levels.

This school bus, maintained and driven by a company driver,
is “the first ever in the history of education in Zamboanga del Norte
province”, according to Tomboc. “Not a single school in the towns
of the province has a school bus provided by a private company. This is one
of the reasons why there are a growing number of student enrollees in Canatuan.”
The two schools here now have a combined total of 415 students from just around
80 in 2004.

The bus also brings the teachers and students to Siocon town
proper some 27 kilometers away during district and provincial education and
sporting events, or to the provincial capital of Dipolog City and other municipalities
in Zamboanga del Norte for Boy Scouts and Girl Scout affairs.

Only a little over four years since TVIRD began mining here,
education has immensely improved in Canatuan, the two officials say.

“Canatuan now has a complete secondary school. The salaries
of all the five teachers assigned in the school are paid for by the company.
Taking its cue from TVIRD, DepEd just recently started constructing a two-room
school building for high school students here. The building will be finished
by December,” says Salvador.

From a “multi-grade system” where one teacher taught
students in two different grades in a day, Canatuan Elementary School now maintains
a “single class system”. The school now owns a generator set –
another gift from TVIRD – for the students’ lighting needs as well
as for their computers. A playground facility has also been installed. Absences
have now been minimal as most of the students are children of TVIRD employees
who now have a regular source of income.

“Learning is now assured here,” Tomboc stresses.
She and Salvador say they appreciate the company’s efforts in prioritizing
education as a component of its community development program.

“The Subanon indigenous people have benefited a lot from
the Gossan operation (TVIRD’s gold-silver project and first stage of operations
here),” Salvador avers.
“I am sure they will receive more benefits from the company’s Sulphide
operation (copper-zinc project, the second stage). We at the DepEd are happy
that TVIRD is in Canatuan. The company is our partner from the private sector
in providing responsive education to our Subanon brothers and sisters right
in their ancestral land.” (Lullie Micabalo)