inqskwela Archives - The Philippine Daily Inquirer at 39

INQskwela and Victorias City

admin — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 03:01:58 +0000

28 schools in Victorias City, Negros Occidental will participate in the INQskwela program for school year 2025-2026. After first partnering with INQskwela in 2023, the city is renewing its collaboration with the Inquirer. The program aims to strengthen reading comprehension, media literacy and critical thinking among learners by incorporating news and information from the Inquirer into classroom lessons, particularly in Social Studies, English, and Journalism. Present during the MOA signing earlier today were (from L-R) Philippine Daily Inquirer’s national sales manager Roy Mendiola, president and CEO Atty. Rudyard S. Arbolado, Victorias City Mayor Javi Benitez and Inquirer Foundation’s executive director Connie R. Kalagayan. Also present were Inquirer’s executive editor Volt Contreras, associate publisher Juliet Javellana, managing editor Robert Abano, logistics and subscription manager Ceasar Castulo, classifieds director Adela Mendoza, senior business development officer Akiko Quijano, corporate affairs officer, Bianca Kasilag-Macahilig and Mayor Benitez’ executive assistant, Trishia Romero.

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INQskwela Journalism Workshop x Baguio 2025

admin — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 02:58:14 +0000

On February 4 and 5, the INQskwela program, in partnership with Baguio City DepEd, held a Journalism Workshop via Zoom, focusing on Sports and Feature Writing. Inquirer's Sports editor, Francis Ochoa, led the sports writing session, while Lifestyle writing editor, Ruth Navarra-Mayo, facilitated the feature writing segment. Attended by the partner schools’ student paper advisers (both in English and Filipino), the workshop was in preparation for the upcoming Divisions School Press Conference. Baguio City is one of the local government units in partnership with the INQskwela program.

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INQskwela Journalism Workshop x Eastern Samar 2025

admin — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 02:55:23 +0000

The INQskwela program held a Journalism Workshop from January 27 to 29 at Dolores National High School in Dolores, Eastern Samar. Designed for student journalists and their coaches, the workshop was led by Inquirer’s business editor, Tina Dumlao. An advocacy initiative by the Inquirer Foundation and the Philippine Daily Inquirer, INQskwela seeks to improve learners' performance in global assessments, particularly in reading comprehension, critical thinking, and news literacy. Eastern Samar is one of the local government units in partnership with the INQskwela program. The Journalism Workshop is among the exclusive benefits offered to partner LGUs and schools.

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PDI execs meet with Deped officials

admin — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 02:51:42 +0000

The Philippine Daily Inquirer team paid a courtesy visit to Department of Education Secretary Sonny Angara on January 8. The Inquirer presented its numerous education advocacies to benefit learners such as INQskwela, Inquirer Read-along, Journalism Scholarships, Student internships and immersions. Sec. Angara commended the newspaper’s efforts to help improve learners’ education and expressed his support for potential collaboration with his department. Present during the meeting were from left, Bureau of Learning Development Specialist Marlon Adlit, Briget Varron and Lea Darrish; Director IV, National Educators Academy of the Philippines Jennifer Lopez, Director Jake Rivera, Assistant Secretary Georgina Yang, Undersecretary Peter Corvera, Secretary Sonny Angara, Philippine Daily Inquirer president & CEO Rudyard Arbolado, AVP for corporate affairs and Inquirer Foundation executive director Connie Kalagayan, senior business development officer Akiko Quijano, national sales manager Roy Mendiola, marketing director Dheza Paras and HR director Jogi Pineda.

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INQskwela goes to Davao del Sur, first LGU partner in Mindanao

admin — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 00:07:54 +0000

DIGOS CITY, DAVAO DEL SUR, Philippines — Davao del Sur schools division superintendent Lorenzo Mendoza of the Department of Education (DepEd) could still recall how he first heard about INQskwela from his counterpart in Baguio City last year. “Aside from students gaining access to e-copies of the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI), there were also interesting activities for learners and pupils. They enjoyed them so much,” said Mendoza, an Inquirer reader since his high school days. He was referring to the experiences shared by colleague Soraya Faculo, schools division superintendent in Baguio, who signed up as an INQskwela partner in June 2023. “I was thinking back then: when could all these beautiful things also happen for us here in Davao del Sur?” Mendoza told the Inquirer in an interview on Monday.

10th tie-up nationwide

The answer became clear two months ago when word came from the provincial governor’s officer that Inquirer would also like to partner with DepEd in Davao del Sur for INQskwela. On Dec. 2, Mendoza, Gov. Yvonne Cagas, represented by lawyer Herbert Gonzales, the provincial administrator, and Inquirer officers signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) formalizing the partnership, making the province INQskwela’s first LGU (local government unit) partner in Mindanao and the 10th nationwide. Under the MOA, 20 schools in the province will be given access to InqPlus, the digital copy of the paper, through the provincial government’s subscription. DepEd principals and teachers will help implement the program by integrating the Inquirer news reports, features and commentary in their classroom discussions, especially in social studies.

Campus journ component

“This is aligned with our vision to empower communities,” said Gonzales. “Information is empowering. This is a welcome opportunity for the province because access to information enables our people to have empowered, informed decisions.” Mendoza also found the agreement to be timely in view of Davao del Sur’s achievements in a recent national campus journalism competition, where it placed third overall, an improvement from their fifth-place ranking last year. Aside from the digital subscription to the paper, among the components of the INQskwela program is the conduct of journalism workshops for campus writers and their teachers in the partner schools. “With this agreement, we hope to strengthen further the hold of Davao del Sur in campus journalism,” the DepEd official said.

Forming news habit

Roy Raul Mendiola, PDI national sales manager, thanked Cagas, the provincial government, and DepEd for their invaluable support for the project. “INQskwela hopes to instill in students the habit of keeping abreast with the latest news, which will improve not only their critical thinking skills but also their communication skills,” Mendiola added. “In a time where disinformation has become widespread on social media, it is vital to guide young minds toward trustworthy sources of information.” Also present at the MOA signing was corporate affairs officer Bianca Kasilag-Macahilig, representing Inquirer assistant vice president for corporate affairs Connie Kalagayan.

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Eastern Samar latest partner of INQskwela

admin — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 00:04:34 +0000

The Philippine Daily Inquirer has found one more partner, the province of Eastern Samar, for its five-year-old educational and media literacy advocacy program INQskwela. A memorandum of agreement (MOA) was signed on July 2 between the Inquirer Foundation, the program’s chief implementer, and the Eastern Samar provincial government led by Gov. Ben Evardone. Under the partnership, 20 public senior high schools in the province will receive subscriptions to the broadsheet and its digital version, the Inquirer Plus app. They may also explore holding campus activities like quiz bees, debates, and talks, which the Inquirer can help facilitate. A former newsman himself, Evardone expressed confidence that “this will help the government [and] the province recover the youth’s loss of competency in current events and reading comprehension, grammar and, most especially, interest in critical national or regional issues.” “There has been a lot of noticeable disinterest in some national issues, social issues, and current events (among the youth) because of the new medium of communication — social media, TikTok, and other outlets,” he said during the MOA signing held at the Inquirer office in Makati City. International rankings based on academic test results, he said, “really show the deterioration of the quality of our educational system, our students, and maybe even the institutions themselves.” Like in other INQskwela partners in the local government, teachers in the subscribing schools may use Inquirer news reports, features, and commentaries as supplemental material for classroom discussions, particularly in social studies.

Challenge amid fake news

“The access to accurate, relevant, and timely information cannot be overemphasized,” Evardone said. “The challenge really is how to ensure access to relevant, quality, timely, and correct information. Because we all know that fake news and disinformation sometimes overcrowd the more important and truthful information.” Earlier INQskwela partners include the municipality of San Manuel in Tarlac, Calumpit town in Bulacan, Victorias City in Negros Occidental, Valenzuela City, Baguio City, and the City of Manila. Also signing the MOA for the Inquirer were national sales manager Roy Mendiola and assistant vice president for corporate affairs Connie Kalagayan, who is also the Inquirer Foundation executive director. For Eastern Samar, the other signatories were Ralph Vincent Evardone, provincial board member, and Marixel Evardone, head of school governance and operations under the Schools Division of Eastern Samar, Department of Education. The latter signed on behalf of Schools Division Superintendent Gorgonio Diaz Jr.

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Bulacan town, INQskwela to boost media literacy of students

admin — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 23:52:07 +0000

CALUMPIT, Bulacan, Philippines — Students and teachers from seven public and private high schools in this town will now have free access to Inquirer Plus, or INQPlus, the digital platform of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, to keep their students abreast of current events without the need to get a print copy from newsstands. Calumpit became the sixth local government to partner with the Inquirer and the Inquirer Foundation when the INQskwela project was revived last year after being halted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Vice Mayor Zacarias Candelaria represented Mayor Glorime Faustino during the signing of the memorandum of agreement with the Inquirer’s executives—Connie Kalagayan, assistant vice president for corporate affairs and the foundation’s executive director; Roy Raul Mendiola, national sales manager; and Adela Mendoza, sales director—at the Calumpit municipal hall on Monday. Candelaria said the partnership would help the youth in this town not only develop their English comprehension but also have direct access to news articles that are found on the country’s top daily broadsheet. He said Faustino found the partnership to be beneficial for the high school students since it would help them differentiate factual news from fake news. According to Kalagayan, the project is part of the Inquirer’s thrust to help the youth develop their love of reading through the more accessible digital form of the Inquirer.

Learning aid

Under the agreement, the digital newspaper would serve as a supplemental learning aid for 30 teachers of Araling Panlipunan (social studies), English and journalism. The seven participating schools are Caniogan High School, Frances National High School, Sta Lucia National High School, San Miguel Meysulao High School, Calumpit National High School, Colegio de Calumpit and St. John the Baptist Catholic School. Part of the agreement is the one-year subscription period for INQPlus sponsored by the local government. The digital version of the Inquirer is uploaded on INQPlus at 4 a.m. daily.

Remarkable improvement

In addition, the participating schools will each receive for free three print copies of the Inquirer, Mendiola said during the signing. Kalagayan said INQskwela was conceived in response to the 2018 findings of the Program for International Student Assessment (Pisa), which showed that the Philippines scored the lowest in reading comprehension out of the 79 countries evaluated. Pisa is a worldwide study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that measures every three years the reading, mathematics and science literacy of 15-year-old students. By making the newspaper readily available to schools as supplemental learning material for junior and senior high school classes, the project hopes to help improve their students’ reading skills, critical thinking, media literacy and general understanding of current events. Based on the reports of the principals and superintendents of the participating schools, the students have shown remarkable improvement in their reading comprehension and other skills where the digital paper served as a teaching aid, Kalagayan said. “Most of the kids who joined the quiz bees and debates became more confident. So, aside from the improved learning skills, the boost in their confidence was a testament to the success of the program,” she added. According to Alexander Cruz, Department of Education district supervisor in Calumpit South, the project would also provide the students with a library of current events through back issues available on INQPlus. “The latest news will just be at the click of a finger. It’s hard to get a newspaper at times, particularly during rainy days and high tide when there are scattered floods in the town,” Cruz said. He added: “Both old and new copies of the newspaper will serve as library materials for the students, which can be accessed right at our fingertips.”

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Victorias City latest local gov’t partner of INQskwela

admin — Sun, 11 Jun 2023 02:16:34 +0000

VICTORIAS CITY, Negros Occidental, Philippines — The Inquirer Foundation’s initiative for the youth and education sector has come to this Negros Occidental city, the first local government in the Visayas and the fourth in the country to sign up as an INQskwela partner. “This is the way moving forward,” Victorias City Mayor Javier Miguel Benitez said on June 6 as he formalized the partnership with the foundation and the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI). Under a memorandum of agreement (MOA), students in 28 public schools of Victorias City will be provided access to Inquirer Plus, the app containing the digital replica of the newspaper, for an entire school year. “[Inquirer Plus will be] among the content we will use to enhance the reading skills of our learners. I am sure this will have a positive impact,” Benitez said. “What is missing in our social media platforms is a gatekeeper that can facilitate newsworthy for us to read. That is what INQskwela is doing.”

Media literacy

Launched in 2019, INQskwela seeks to offer the paper as a supplemental educational material that teachers can use to develop their students’ reading skills, critical thinking, media literacy, and general grasp of public affairs and current events. The project started with four Metro Manila schools as partners that year, namely Fort Bonifacio High School in Makati, Ramon Magsaysay High School in Manila, CAA Elementary School-Main in Las Piñas City, and Batasan Hills National High School in Quezon City. In 2022, after taking a pause due to the pandemic, the project expanded as it found a local government partner in Valenzuela City (26 schools), followed by San Manuel, Tarlac (17 schools), and Manila (20 schools) early this year. For the June 6 MOA signing held at Victorias City Hall, PDI was represented by national sales manager Roy Raul Mendiola, with PDI senior business development officer Akiko Quijano also present. Together with the mayor, also signing for the host local government were Councilor Derek Palanca, chair of the committee on education; and Victorias City Superintendent of Schools Portia Mallorca. The heads of the 28 participating schools were likewise in attendance. “With easier access to the newspaper, it is hoped that the students would further develop their love of reading and interest in current events,” said Mendiola as he thanked Benitez and Victorias City for the partnership.

—REPORTS FROM CARLA GOMEZ AND BIANCA KASILAG-MACAHILIG

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PDI brings INQPlus to 17 Tarlac schools under INQskwela project

admin — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 09:44:56 +0000

SAN MANUEL, Tarlac, Philippines — Thirteen public elementary schools, two integrated schools, and two public high schools were given access to Inquirer Plus (INQPlus), the digital platform of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, under a partnership forged on March 23 with the municipal government here. San Manuel became the fourth local government in the country to partner with the Inquirer and the Inquirer Foundation for the INQskwela project, according to Connie Kalagayan, the publication’s assistant vice president for corporate affairs and the foundation’s executive director. INQskwela aims to promote reading among the youth by offering the newspaper as a classroom resource for discussions on current events, media literacy, and critical thinking. “The Inquirer shouldn’t just be telling you the ‘what where, when’ of the news. We don’t just tell you the bad and the good news because I believe that a good company should also be able to provide solutions to the news we come out with,” said Kalagayan during the signing of a memorandum of agreement (MOA) at the conference room of the San Manuel Farmers Center. Under the partnership, the local government will sponsor the Inquirer Plus subscription for the participating schools. According to the Pisa study, elementary and high school students in the Philippines ranked lowest in reading comprehension, and second lowest in science and mathematics out of the 79 countries evaluated. “We felt that it’s a big challenge for education in the Philippines. It’s a big challenge for the teachers and part of the problem in the local government units. That’s why we came up with the idea of INQskwela,” Kalagayan said in her speech.

Fighting fake news

She said the project would give students easier access to a credible source of information and commentary at a time when fake news and disinformation could easily spread online. Signing the MOA were Kalagayan; Inquirer national sales manager Roy Raul Mendiola; Dr. Rommel Reginaldo, district supervisor of the Office of the Schools Division – Department of Education; and San Manuel Mayor Doña Cresencia Tesoro, who was represented by her brother, Vice Mayor Sir Benjamin Tesoro. “Let us help ourselves, and let us help (the Inquirer) in helping us further strengthen education,” the vice mayor said in his speech. Dr. Artbie Samson, the principal of the San Agustin Integrated School, said he was hoping the students would “discover or further develop their love of reading and knowledge of current events” through the project, adding: “The newspapers will also serve as learning aid for teachers since news is incorporated into their lesson plans.” He said the INQPlus app would also help aspiring journalists embrace what he described as the “magic of journalism.” “They (students) will be given more lessons about the dos and don’ts of journalism, “ Samson added. Under the project, proponents would also conduct debates and quiz bees among the 17 schools to test their knowledge about current events. Earlier InqSkwela partners include the local governments of Manila, Valenzuela City, and Victorias City (Negros Occidental). Five more partnerships are currently in the works.

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