http://www.ateneo.edu/index.php?p=88

Since 1997, the ACED has helped shape the lives of children, teachers, school heads, and parents. The Ateneo de Manila University established the ACED to help provide a systematic, high impact, and visible program of support for the Philippine public school system.

The center focuses its efforts on four major areas of educational development:

• Public School Teacher Training Program
• Principal Empowerment Program
• Research and Development
• Curriculum, textbooks, and Instructional Materials Development

The center also helps develop communities and supports systems-based integrated approaches that bolster the growth of schools. The center has made itself available to assist public schools and their stakeholders through initiatives that include awareness building; technology transfer by way of school-based research, planning, and stakeholder analysis; and community support through strengthened networks.

In all of its undertakings – in its professional training programs, its school and community-based work, and research endeavours – the center actively promotes the upliftment of public education through the collaboration of all stakeholders. This drive for unity has enabled the Ateneo de Manila University to extend its resources to more teachers, school heads, and schools.

The ACED finds ripe opportunities to link its more institutionalized networks and programs with a more grassroots approach towards addressing sustainability, effectivity and efficiency. Thus, ACED pursues a more grassroots yet holistic approach toward uplifting public education – by focusing on the school as the heart of reform.

This engagement involves three steps:

1. Profiling of Target Public Schools.
2. School- and Community-Based Strategic Planning Workshop.
3. Capability-Building, i.e. Training Programs