The Pearl Principle Formation School: CIE’s Response to the Challenges of Functional Illiteracy and Poverty Through Social Entrepreneurship

The Pearl Principle Formation School provides pre-school education with emphasis on Reading & Critical Thinking, Writing, Mathematics, English as a Second Language and Pearl Principle Values to children ages 4 to 8 years old of economically disadvantaged or lower middle-income families by delivering an effective and relevant curriculum.

The Pearl Principle School is a parallel school system to our public school system. It allows any non-profit or non-government organizations, business organizations and even government instrumentalities to set up a Pre-school Education Program in underserved communities.

The system provides support for faculty training and development, a license to a proven system of teaching, financial and school management system, free consulting services and quality assessment to aid organizations in setting up and operating the school in their community.

Why 4-8 years old? Why lower middle-income?

The first six years of the child's life is the most crucial because it is within this period that the foundation of one's personhood is laid out. We believe that with proper formation, the child is in a better position to succeed in subsequent learning stages. This is where, we believe, we can ultimately eradicate functional illiteracy.

The data on education should already give you an obvious clue why we chose the lower middle-income families. They constitute the bulk of the public school population. There were 12,089,365 students in Grade 6 in the Public Schools all over the country as against 926,122 from the private schools in school-year 2004-2005. 5,043,776 students were in 4th year high school in the Public Schools against 1,268,255 students in the Private Schools. This population constitutes the aggregate population of our future human resource. It is obviously not realistic to project appropriate or gainful employment of 10 million every year if more than 6 million of the emerging workforce is functionally illiterate.

The Pearl Principle Formation School: A Summary

• It is one of CIE’s Social Engagement initiatives under the Six High Impact Programmes (S.H.I.P.).
  
  
• It is the operationalization of CIE’s Vision and Mission.
  
  
• The PPFS was designed specifically to address the issue of functional illiteracy and gaps in the educational system.
  
  
• The PPFS is packaged as a Social Enterprise that any non-profit, business organization or non-government organization can invest in and operate in their respective communities.
  
  
• Its curriculum is designed and developed benchmarked by CIE GEQ.
  
  
• The operation, management and curriculum development are governed by the terms and conditions of a License Agreement.
  
  
• The license to use the PPFS System is currently free but applicants are required to invest in the training workshop where they will be certified and given the manuals of operation. A PPFS school must be an institutional member of CIE GEQ which requires a nominal registration fee renewable every 5 years.
  

Where to get information?

The Executive Director
Pearl Principle
Centre for International Education
168 Pres. Magsaysay Street, Kasambagan
6000 Cebu City, Philippines
Call: (032) 2332566 / 4127622
Email: virgilio.paralisan@cie.edu