Only 200,000 of the 24 million learners nationwide are being retained of their grade levels despite plummeting proficiency rates, in response to the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) on Tuesday.
“There are only about 200,000 students who get retained. Which means that there are students who get retained, but a really slim proportion of the 24 million students that we have now,” EDCOM 2 Executive Director Karol Mark R. Yee told BusinessWorld in an interview.
“We really want to grasp higher if this can be a figure that we will trust? Is that this a reputable figure that’s representative of all those that are really struggling?” he added.
In its Final Report, the commission found that separate assessment tests showed “non-proficient” students grew from 30% in Grade 3 as much as 74% in Grade 12.
“The steep decline is from Grade 3, Grade 6, Grade 10, and Grade 12,” Mr. Yee said.
“People could also be progressing by grade level, they keep getting promoted without really having the knowledge or ensuring that the competencies are really there,” he added.
By way of reading proficiency, 88% of scholars struggle to read in response to their grade level originally of the college yr.
For junior highschool students, 40% to 52% are at the very least two grade levels behind in reading, based on the Philippine Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI) assessment.
“These evince the urgency of addressing mass promotion and the rolling out of well-designed interventions to deal with literacy gaps on the secondary level,” EDCOM 2 said in its report.
“Literacy is the gateway to learning numeracy, and other competencies across subjects,” it added.
‘Mass promotion culture’
A key issue underscored in EDCOM 2’s report is the country’s mass promotion culture and its correlation with other problems existing inside the education system.
“For us, mass promotion is many things. There is no such thing as a real policy of DepEd (Department of Education) to advertise students mechanically, nevertheless it is a confluence of multiple aspects,” Mr. Yee said.
“It is absolutely more about the system as an entire and addressing all of those barriers that stop our teachers from with the ability to support their students well,” he added.
Teachers’ skilled autonomy in deciding learners’ promotion is heavily influenced by the pressure from higher authorities in the college.
“We’ve also heard from many stories of teachers that they sometimes get castigated by principals or other colleagues,” Mr. Yee said. “In the event that they fail any student they should justify to the principal, to the division office, why a student needed to fail.”
“It looks as if they should prove that they did all the things and exhausted all supports available, when in reality no support or little or no support was given to them themselves as teachers,” he added.
The DepEd’s policy on grade transmutation also amplifies the demand to pass all students despite not meeting the expected skills and knowledge.
Within the Transmutation Table from DepEd Order No. 8 s. 2015, the initial grade of 60 to 61.59 is transmuted to 75, or a few 15-point increase.
“Now we have continually been repeating and advocating that it’s time to review that policy, perhaps phase it out on the soonest possible time,” he said. “It’s giving us a semblance of normality, or that all the things is okay when in reality it isn’t.”
EDCOM 2 proposes reconfigurations of the Results-Based Performance Management System (RPMS) and Office Performance Commitment and Review Form (OPCRF) to make sure that no incentives are given related to learners’ promotion.
“The performance of the college is tied to completion rate, passing rates, zero dropout rates, and due to this fact, it’s all connected,” Mr. Yee said.
“So long as we keep doing that, we’re really unintentionally reinforcing mass promotion, which is why our position is we’d like to revise our targets,” he added.
In January, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers Philippines called for the review of RPMS following the death of a public school teacher during her scheduled classroom statement. — Almira Louise S. Martinez