The second batch of Security Bank Foundation, Inc.’s (SBFI) school principal training program kicked off with an in-person training session with 24 principals from around the country on July 9-12, 2024, at the Sacred Heart School – Ateneo de Cebu. Called the Certificate in Educational Studies in Leadership (CESL), the program is conducted in partnership with the Ateneo Center for Educational Development, The HEAD Foundation Singapore, and the University of Bristol United Kingdom.
CESL is a four-month international certification program on educational leadership. The program consists of in-person training sessions, industry visits, online learning sessions, and an online mentoring session. CESL is part of SBFI’s three-year Mentoring Future Leaders for Nation-Building program aimed at developing school principals as masters and mentors of school problem-solving, instructional leadership, and stakeholder engagement.
Each of the 24 participants were asked to develop a Transformational Action Plan (TAP) to address a pressing issue in their school, implement the TAP, then present the results.
Recognizing the high number of non-readers in her school, Rolibecca Cruz of Tacurong Pilot Elementary School in Sultan Kudarat developed a TAP entitled BasaOke, which uses Karaoke singing in classrooms to improve English word recognition, language fluency, and reading comprehension of students.
Bayani Adona of Leyte National High School in Tacloban City developed a TAP entitled School Digital Dashboard, which aims to address the school’s manual processing and difficulty of generating reports for a school of 10,000 students and 400 teachers by digitizing data collection and extraction.
“Our goal is to make an army of change makers in the public education sector. If we can inspire them to lead changes in their respective schools and these changes become an inspiration for others to follow; to bear bore fruit for programs and systems that can be replicated for the benefit of other schools, then that is a legacy that we can leave together for our nation’s future,” shared SBFI Chairman Rafael Simpao, Jr.
To inspire participants to further innovate their TAPs, participants visited the facilities of Visayan Electric, the second largest electric distribution utility in the country, and Bai Hotel, a Filipino-owned standalone business hotel—the largest hotel in Visayas by room capacity.
At Visayan Electric, participants learned about the journey of converting paper-based electric pole maps into a digitized system allowing better monitoring of a large electrical franchise area and giving room for further innovation of integrated processes. Participants also learned about how Visayan Electric boosts employee energy by playing music—and encouraging dance breaks—at 10:00 am and 3:00 pm every day.
At Bai Hotel, participants learned about how the hotel lives to their brand of being a “distinctly Filipino hotel” through the Filipino way of hospitality service to guests, training of people, marketing, and sustainability efforts.
SBFI’s school principals will continue their first year of training, inclusive of CESL, with the enhancement and partial implementation of their draft TAPs, with progress presentations set for October 2024.
To learn more about SBFI’s programs and how you can contribute, visit www.securitybank.com/foundation.