The Asian Institute of Management has provided affordable seminars on strategy to educational institutions.
These offerings not only provide the education industry the much needed help, but prepare and equip them for changes in the business environment.
Conducted by seasoned lecturers Dean Henry S. Tendero, Dr. Poch Macaranas, and Mr. Pons Carpio, they discussed “Strengthening Partnership in Education” last March 20.
The Association of Science and Math Educators of Philippine Private and Public Schools International CEO Dr. Eloisa Olivera, COO Dr. Santos Castillo and Internal VP Celia Rasing attended the seminars together with hundreds of school executives.
The education industry has been badly hit by the pandemic, and is just beginning to regain the previous population of students.
This author had to leave the medical industry to take the leadership of Marie Osmund School during these trying times, when most students migrated to public schools. I invited our son, Osmund, to rejoin us in leading our new set of faculty.
Members of our faculty decided to go home during the onset of COVID-19, except for Nicole Burog, our preschool teacher, and Hezel Seville, our office staff. Recruiting new teachers took us a while, and training them took longer. Every day we drilled on using Zoom since Vibal’s video platform, though their e-books functions at its best, bugs down when there are more than three attendees.
Our quick response to the health crisis has helped us retain 75-80 percent of our population. Start of classes finally began third week of August of 2020, and it ran smoothly. Other schools had opened earlier, and had to face tremendous challenges, and had to recalibrate their strategies in the middle of the game.
My previous management training from AIM and local and overseas on strategies, has been put to use, thanks to the notes that I have kept until today. Josiah Go’s of Mansmith and Fielders and George Drysdale’s Harvard notes on crisis management have been put into good use during these surviving moments.
I could confidently say that no CEO of any educational institution has foreseen this to happen. Just like when the Japanese bombed the Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, everyone was sleeping and woke up with no airplane available to fight back. Businesses, especially schools, were at the mercy of the sudden exodus of students to public schools.
In October of 2019, Marie Osmund School was able to ink a partnership contract in the form of loan from Vibal Publishing to purchase a lot for construction of a high school building.
The aftermath of the crisis has prevented its materialization and the plan is still alive as a dream, as of this writing. God will bless this dream and I am inviting you to keep the faith and attend the blessing of our new building years from now.
Until our educational institutions have repaired the delivery of education through more effective strategies, we are in peril of failure as a country with the majority of constituents uneducated.
The effect on the economy because of the downfall on education will bring any country to its knees, and post pandemic, this should be one area our government needs to focus its resources on. Until then, God help us. ||
