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CEBU education officials may be feeling they got a
slap on the face when the government reported that four of the
province’s schools “were counted among the 10 lowest-performing
schools” in the country for school year 2006-2007, based on test
results for sixth-graders. On top of it, the report said the
Department of Education (DepEd) has “directed all its offices and
schools to align their priorities to turn around a low performance
in English.”
Low performance in English is
something most teachers and parents who are unable to send their
children to private schools know for quite sometime now. The decline
in English proficiency among public school students, a retired
public school teacher observed, stems from the fact that the
teachers and students attention is split between bilingual medium of
communication in the classroom.
The First Biennial National
Congress on Education in Manila last week showed a deep sense of
concern among our educators and leaders over the recent findings of
a highly deteriorated standard of education in the country. They are
worried over the fact that the state of education is reportedly
“among the bottom dwellers in global student competitiveness…”
This assessment of education
among Asian nations is perhaps the best thing that has happened to
the education sector of the country. It has opened the need to
arrest the downslide of our standards. The education summit last
week is “the first major review of what has ailed Philippine
education since it was ‘trifocalized’ in 1994.”
The concept of education that
focuses on three objectives may have been anchored on the belief
that the nation could be producing quantity graduates in as many
disciplines as it possibly can. Thus, the Department of
Education’s main thrust is the general education for Filipino
children, for elementary and high school. Next is the development of
varied disciplines and competencies in higher education.
The Technical Education and
Skills Development Authority (Tesda) oversees vocational courses.
However, Tesda hardly helps our youth in the rural areas to develop
skills that would make them “salable” in the job market. There
is hardly any effort on the part of DepEd to attract school dropouts
to enroll in vocational courses that aren’t available in all rural
schools.
Central Visayas DepEd assistant
regional director Recaredo Borgonia, who rose from the ranks
starting as a barangay schoolteacher, suggests that teachers
assigned to the upland schools be given more incentives in terms of
privileges and remuneration, citing the finding that “among the 10
lowest-performing schools in English” come from his region.
The common denominator in the
educational problem is lack of funds. This is the blindside of our
educational system. The World Bank encourages developing countries
to spend at least 20 percent of their national budget on education.
The Philippines could spend only 12 percent. The Unesco is
suggesting we spend at least six percent of gross domestic product
(GDP); we are up to 2.5 percent only.
So, we lack well-trained
teachers, we lack classrooms to cut down the number of pupils per
class from 70 pupils to just 40. In the absence of adequate
salaries, teachers in mountainous areas report to classes late
Monday afternoon and come down to the lowlands early Friday morning.
How can pupils and high school students perform well in English and
Math?
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