By YOLANDA Z. SOTELO

THREE schools in Sual town are plain lucky as they are beneficiaries of big companies’ community program.

The first lucky school is the Pangascasan Integrated School (Grades I-10, the first six is the elementary and the remaining four, the secondary).

Pangascasan village hosts Mirant’s 1,200 megawatt Sual power station. The integrated school (elementary and high school) is located just outside the station’s gate, in a hilly area overlooking a scenic beach of the Lingayen Gulf

and rice fields.

Last week, the Mirant Philippines launched its Adopt-A-School Program through groundbreaking ceremony for the two-story six-classroom building in the school. Department of Education Jesli Lapus was the guest of honor and speaker during the affair.

Jose Bonafe, the amiable senior manager of the support services department of the Mirant, said next year, close to 200 high school students from the school will have no classrooms as the available classrooms can accommodate only the first and second year (grade 7 and students only.

This means that the incoming third and fourth year students will be forced to enroll elsewhere. For their sake, Mirant Sual Corporation MSC) agreed to fund the two-level, six-classroom school building, he said.

The project includes an equipped science laboratory room, can accommodate third and fourth year (9th and 10th grades) students from eight villages of the town.

Aside from constructing the building, the MSC will conduct teachers training in English, Science and Math proficiency in its host town. This is in partnership with the MPFI and in coordination with the DepED-National Educators Academy of the Philippines and DepED Pangasinan Division I office and EduQuest.

A total of 151 teachers from elementary in the town will undergo the training.

A briefing material on the project said Sual has 19 elementary schools with more than 5,000 students from grades I-VI. The average National Achievement Test (NAT) scores of the Sual grade VI (now first year high school), is 57.48 percent which is below the national average of 58 percent.

“There are five barangays in Sual that registered a score as low as 31 percent,” it said.

The 171 elementary and pre-school teachers will take a diagnostic test, the results of which will be the basis for their training in the three subjects, which hopefully will improve their teaching competency, the briefer said.

The other lucky schools in Sual are the Paitan Elementary School and Siasio Elementary School. They received one unit each of Kidsmart Early Learning Program from IBM Philippines.

Roger Burgos, communications manager of the company, said the program was a part of the company’s community relations program and efforts to introduce technology in early learning.

The Kidsmart is composed of an IBM computer, little tyke furniture and softwares.

“The Kidsmart is a comprehensive learning program designed to support pre-school children in their early quest for knowledge. It uses IBM’s Young Explorer product which is a personal computer that is encased in Little Tikes furniture and has been pre-loaded with software from Edmar,” a briefer on the program said.

Burgos said while computer education is emphasized both in college and high school, the pre-school is being left out. The IBM Philippines is trying to fill that need, he said.

“How do you introduce computers and teach young children? You need to have a methodology. That is why we teach our recipient schools so that learning computer will be fun, students will actually learn more while using computers,” he said.

He added, “There are modules that teach children how to do mathematics. There are modules that focus on learning how to read. There are games involving words, letters and phonetics, Math, visual reasoning, classifying objects.”

The IBM has donated to 112 institutions in the Philippines , covering public schools, museums, science centrums and day care centers.