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The Multiply-Ed National Multisectoral Conference was held in Pasig City on August 7-8.
Duty bearers from key offices of the Department of Education (DepEd) and the National Youth Commission (NYC) and representatives from the Education Commission 2 attended the event. The Commission on Audit (COA) was also there as an accountability ally. Multiply-Ed (X-Ed) government allies from schools, DepEd division offices and local governments were also present to show solidarity and support.
G-Watch Convenor-Director Joy Aceron, in her Opening Remarks, called the gathering part of X-Ed’s “co-construction of accountability”:
“Constructive accountability, as we understand and practice in Multiply-Ed is about co-constructing accountability. The operational term is co-constructing. Together, we co-construct how we will account the exercise of power, how programs and services have performed, how we fared in achieving our shared responsibility and our collective accountability.
We who co-construct accountability are part of a movement. Such is movement-building that traverses state and society. The divide is not between government and civil society. The divide is between those who are pro-reform, pro-accountability, pro-social justice and pro-democracy on the one hand and those who are against it.”
The X-Ed National Coalition was also launched during the said event. Consisting of student and youth coalitions at different levels, the X-Ed National Coalition takes up the key reform agenda of X-Ed under the banner #MalayangEdukasyonPH.
Based on the monitoring results and recommendations of Multiply-Ed Philippines, the X-Ed movement has developed four main campaign coalitions centering on the following campaign goals:
The campaigns are led by member-movement organizations of the Center for Youth Advocacy and Networking (CYAN) that are leveraging the actionable evidence generated by X-Ed to organize, expand and generate government response and actions.
These advocacy campaigns form part of the virtuous cycle of synergy of advocacy and monitoring in vertical integration.
MultiplY-Ed (X-Ed) is a youth-led, multi-sectoral, and multi-level accountability initiative on education. It is a project of the Center for Youth Advocacy and Networking (CYAN), Government Watch (G- Watch), and the Student Council Alliance of the Philippines (SCAP) that aims to improve transparency, participation, and accountability in education governance, particularly the implementation of learning continuity plans for Senior High Schools and the transition to face-to- face classes post-COVID. Multiply-Ed employs vertical integration, a strategic approach to accountability that synergizes citizen actions at different levels of decision-making, including advocacy and monitoring approaches, to deliver powershifting gains in terms of civil society capacity and governance reforms. (For more on vertical integration, see Aceron 2017 and Fox and Aceron 2016).