Bridging the Education Gap – HSBC Awards Outstanding Principals
As a culmination of its three-year educator training program, HSBC recognized five outstanding principals who have effectively transformed their elementary schools through the HSBC Principals Leadership Enhancement and Development (LEAD) Program (PLP) last Sept. 12 (2012) at Shangri-La Makati.
The five principals were chosen among PLP participants who underwent rigorous training during a series of conferences that tackled leadership, management, professional development and human resource issues.
“We at HSBC are pleased to honor these five remarkable principals who lived up to the PLP mission of making a significant impact on their schools,” says HSBC president and CEO Tony Cripps. “They displayed exemplary leadership and have shown how they can be effective CEOs of their schools in accordance with the best-practice strategies learned from the PLP conference.”
The five honorees were chosen based on their post-program performance as well as their ratings from school visits after attending the PLP conferences. They are Zenaida S. Penafuerte of Rizal Elementary School; Marilyn C. Macalma of Cembo Elementary School; Dr. Elita T. Lopez of Comembo Elementary School; Marciana De Guzman of Nangka Elementary School; and Aurora Marcelino of P. Manalo Elementary School. Cripps, together with Margarita Delgado, president of the Sa Aklat Sisikat Foundation, formally handed out the awards.
The HSBC PLP is the first of its kind in the country and is an undertaking in partnership with SAS, a non-government organization focused on bridging the education gap in the Philippines. Founded by philanthropist Lizzie Zobel and Margarita Delgado in 2001, SAS initially promoted functional literacy and progressive teacher training in collaboration with the Department of Education.
In 2009, SAS together with HSBC launched PLP in response to Republic Act 9155, which gave principals full authority and responsibility for the effective management of their schools. The program aids principals to identify the needs and problems of their schools and community, and equips them with the necessary tools to revise the standard curriculum to address these.
“We believe that as captains of our educational system, principals should be provided with proper resources so they will be able to steer their schools towards becoming innovative learning communities,” says Zobel.
Since the program’s inception, PLP has trained 200 principals from various schools all over the Philippines in three separate batches. It was also through the program that the Principal’s Handbook was developed by SAS and distributed nationwide. The handbook guides principals in their everyday work as community leaders.
