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By Rene Q. Bas, Editor in Chief
Based on what he saw in the Quezon City schools
he visited that day and what his Department of Education subalterns
from all over the country told him, Education Secretary Jesli Lapus
had many things to be happy about in the smooth and orderly opening
of schoolyear 2008 to 2009 on Tuesday, June 10.
“It seems that our preparations, including the
weeklong Oplan Balik Eskwela and coordination with other government
agencies, local governments and the community, has paid off,” The
Times and other newspapers quoted Secretary Lapus as saying that
day.
He also said there was no classroom shortage,
with places of extreme student densities using schools in two
shifts. But, he said, “about 97 percent of all our public schools
are on single shift.”
He also told reporters that each of the 20
million or more students throughout the country received his or her
own textbook in the core subjects. These are Math, Science, English
and Civics or Makabayan.
And complaints received by the department’s
Balik Eskwela Information and Action Center were a mere 258,
together with inquiries and requests, the secretary told the media.
Sporadic reports from all over the country,
however, tell a less happy story indicating that the same old
problems still bedevil government-offered basic education.
Some places, expectedly, had no textbooks. In
other places, the schools were closed for some reason or another.
And in some others, teachers and students had to begin the
schoolyear under the shade of trees.
This made the Freedom from Debt Coalition, from
whom The Times solicited an article about the basic education issue,
to lead off with the statement:
“When classes formally opened last Tuesday,
the entire nation was once again subjected to the same old problems
besetting our education. From shortages of classrooms, teaching
materials and instructors, up to unregulated tuition and other
school fee hikes; students, parents and educators once more bore the
burden of the yearly school blues like a deadbeat ritual imposed to
an exhausted populace.
“Yet amid the political rhetoric and empty
populism of our national leaders, little to none is [being] said
about the grave wrongdoing of our government to education—the
blatant non-compliance to international standards on social spending
by the past and present governments.”
Error in textbooks
Another matter about textbooks—whether it is
true that more than 20 million basic education students in public
schools each has his or her core subject textbook—is the errors in
them.
As far as Educator Antonio Calipjo Go (whose
articles we have published) knows, the factual, logical and language
errors he has been complaining about are still in the textbooks.
He might have won in one battle. On May 19,
Secretary Lapus issued DepEd Order No. 39, s. 2008, telling all
bureau and regional Education directors, school division chiefs and
city superintendents, and heads of private and public elementary
schools that after being reviewed by the Instructional Materials
Council Secretariat, the series Simply Science in the Next Century
Grades 1 ro 6 and Harnessing English Arts today Grades 1 to 6 are
not to be used henceforth and until they are revised and have passed
the Education department’s content evaluation.
Go has however found errors in dozens and dozens
of textbooks and there is no news about them similarly being banned
from the schools until corrected.
Adopt a school
The Education department must be commended for
using all means to solve the classroom shortage problem. One of
these is the Adopt- a-School Program. And Coca-Cola’s “The
Little Red Schoolhouse” program. Critics are saying, though, that
these must not be made the permanent solution. Government simply has
to invest more serious money in education.
That is exactly what Sen. Mar Roxas’
“Omnibus Education Reform Act of 2008” or Senate Bill (SB) 2294
will do.
The bill proceeds from the correct premise that
the Philippines radically needs educational reform because the
education our children are getting in public schools is substandard
and incomplete.
Out of 100 children who enroll in Grade 1, only
65 complete Grade 6. Even less—43—graduate from high school.
Only 23 percent of those who reach Grade 6 can
actually understand what they are reading.
Of those who complete fourth year of high
school, only 16 percent achieve the required mastery of Math. The
numbers are worse for English (7 percent) and Science (2 percent).
Sen. Roxas says, “What they learn at school is
not adequate enough, and as a consequence their knowledge is not
enough to be effective in a job.”
Another fact: Of our college graduates, only 2
percent to 7 percent of those who apply for jobs in the BPO
(business process outsourcing) industry get accepted—after which
they still have to undergo an additional 3 months of in-house
training.
Only 54 percent of practicing doctors in the
Visayas passed a competency-based exam, only 56 percent would
correctly admit a patient to a hospital and only 42 percent could
administer the correct medicine, only 45 percent would correctly
administer oxygen in respiratory cases.
Companies find it difficult to find entry-level
position Filipinos in accounting, finance, sales, customer service,
and certain IT and engineering positions. Employers cite
applicants’ inability to make the grade in English oral
communication, impact and confidence, and analytical thinking.
Reform now
Sen. Roxas says reforms must be made now or else
“because education is a long-term commitment, the more we delay
reforms, the less competent our children will become in an
increasingly competitive arena.”
Roxas points out also that the national average
for Math in the 2003 Trends in Math and Science Survey (TIMSS) is
378. This is almost a hundred points below the 467 international
average, and way below the top-scorer, Singapore, which scored 605.
In Science, our national average is 377, as
against the international average of 474 and the best score (again,
Singapore,) of 578.
Roxas says, “Even if we gain 8 points a year,
it would still take 12 years for us to be at par with the
international average, and 28 years to compete for the best
score.”
This is because, Roxas told The Times, education
in the Philippines is incomplete.
Our 10 years of basic education is below the
global norm of 12 years. The Philippines is the only country in Asia
still following a 10-year basic education cycle.
We are one of the only three countries in the
world with a 10-year cycle—the other two are in Africa, countries
that are in bad shape like us.
He laments the government’s failure to give
importance to basic education.
He says: “Whereas the global norm is a 5 to 6
percent GDP allocation for education, our government only allots 2.5
to 3 percent to education.”
Then the classrooms are overcrowded. The
teachers are ill paid.
And treated badly!
Undernourished pupils
Children are not being nourished properly. There
is a strong correlation between poor nutrition and dropout
incidence.
The greatest fallout rate is between Grades 1 to
3, where as much as 22 out of 100 students drop out of school.
Thirty percent of of pupils aged 6 to 12 years
(Grades 1 to 6) are underweight or “under-height.”
Only 26 percent of Filipino children are being
taught their lessons in their mother tongue—the language first
used by the child and customarily used at home.
Unesco research shows that a teacher in a
minority language community in India, teaching the Hindi language
observed: “Children are very good at copying from the blackboard.
By the time they reach Grade 5, they can copy all the answers and
memorize them. But only two of the Grade 5 students can actually
speak Hindi.”
Teachers use Kalinga to teach children from
Grades 1 to 3 on how to read and write, as well as to teach other
subjects, including Filipino and English. Student test scores
indicate greater gains when the mother tongue is used as medium of
instruction for teaching content and for teaching the two national
languages. In fact, students of Lubuagan, a district in Kalinga,
topped the 2006 NAT Grade 3 Reading Test for both English and
Filipino, with mean scores of 76.55 percent and 76.45 percent
respectively.
So, Sen. Roxas asks, what should be our
targets?
Our aim is to attain, in 10 years, the following
qualitative targets:
Literacy and numeracy by the third year of
elementary.
A solid foundation of Math and Science by the
last year of elementary.
Proficiency in English and Filipino by the
second year of high school.
Competency of high school graduates in pursuing
higher learning or a productive career.
The quantitative targets to be attained in 10
years are:
For 83 percent of first-graders to reach the
sixth grade.
For 99 percent of sixth-graders to reach the
first year of high school.
For 85 percent of first-year secondary schoolers
to reach the fourth year of high school.
A completion rate where 70 percent of
first-graders reach the fourth year of high school.
How do we get there?
The Omnibus Education Reform Act of 2008
proposes eight provisions that could institute real, meaningful
change in our educational system:
Requiring the Department of Education to come up
with a 10-year Strategic Education Reform Program within 60 days of
enactment of the measure, with the objective of remedying the
present education situation.
Mandating the use of the mother tongue, or the
language first learned by the child and customarily used at home, as
the medium of instruction for Grades, 1, 2 and 3. Filipino and
English shall be taught as separate subjects.
Increasing the education cycle from 10 years to
12 years, by adding a seventh grade in elementary and a fifth year
in secondary school.
Establishment of a mandatory in-school direct
feeding program for Grades 1 and 2, to sustain the nutrition and
health of children and prevent dropping out.
Imposition of performance standards, whereby a
diagnostic test is administered to students at the end of Grades 3
and 6, to identify those who need special learning assistance as
they proceed to the next grade level.
The offering of electives to help equip a
student with the knowledge and skills in pursuing further studies or
a line of work.
Intensive training and upgrading programs for
teachers: a training program on teaching methods using the mother
language for teachers in Grades 1 to 3; and upgrading courses for
English, Science and Math teachers who are not majors in these
subjects; and:
A compulsory pre-school education year.
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