By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
Department of Education (DepEd) Deputy Spokesperson Francis Bringas said that the country may have to quadruple its current USD 11,030.00 per student spending before it could expect to perform at the level of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa).
Bringas had acknowledged that with the state of our economy, we cannot expect to be able to keep up with the developed countries in funding for education thus it was strange he recommended the unrealistic quadrupling of our current budget per student specially so we have a fellow Southeast Asian country in the same income category which is succeeding in international student assessments on a shoestring. It is impossible that the DepEd is unaware that in the 2022 Pisa, Vietnam missed the OECD averages in mathematics, science and reading by mere 3, 13 and 14 points, respectively, all on a per student spending of USD 13,800.00 or just USD 2,770.00 or 25.11 percent more than the Philippines.
In the 2012 and 2013 Pisa rounds, Vietnam topped all developing countries and had outranked many rich countries. In those two rounds, Vietnam surpassed all the OECD average scores except in reading in 2015.
Observers agree that money is not the main ingredient in Vietnam’s success in education. The article “Vietnam’s high Pisa scores cause stir” in the November 4, 2015 issue of the Bangkok Post states: “Vietnam’s surprising rise in education is not about resources. Instead, the explanation lies in the careful choice of education policies and in political commitment and leadership.”
It is easy to see how come in the 2022 Pisa, Vietnam had placed No. 31 to the Philippines’ No. 75 (based on mathematics, the main domain for the round). Here are a couple of the most glaring differences in the education systems of the two countries:
1. In Vietnam, there is an entrance examination for senior high school and senior high school graduation examination cum university entrance test which students must pass in order to pursue higher education. In the Philippines, there are no similar hurdles as the National Achievement Test has no bearing on the graduation of our students.
The challenges force Vietnamese students to take their studies seriously and diligently because so much is at stake in the tests. On the other hand, the lack of graduation tests in the Philippines breeds complacent and uncompetitive students, a reality which has been exposed by international student assessments several times now.
2. Vietnam makes sure its schoolchildren learn to read in Grade 1 while the Philippines is not particular about when learners learn the basic skill.
There are no materials online which explicitly say that all Grade 1 pupils in Vietnam learn to read before the school year ends but the following data strongly indicate that such is the practice in that country:
• Finding of the Young Lives project of the Oxford University that in a basic literacy and numeracy tests given to a sample of 1,000 eight-year-old children from five Vietnamese provinces “88 per cent could read a basic sentence, 75 per cent could write a basic sentence without errors or difficulties and 86 percent could successfully answer a simple numeracy test.”
• Learning poverty as of 2019 was 2 percent.
On the other hand, the Philippines allows non-readers to graduate from the elementary and even from senior high school (“Why is Edcom II not addressing literacy crisis?” Letters, 11/9/23; “We have senior high school graduates who cannot read,” Letters, 11/20/23).
The DepEd should also know that the case of the Dominican Republic (DR) indicates that even if our education funding is increased if the agency’s ineffectiveness in teaching reading is not fixed, the country will remain stuck in the bottom of the rankings. The DR is spending USD 46,500.00 per student which is more than four times the funding of the Philippines but it is one of the six countries the latter outdid in the 2022 Pisa. How come? Just like Filipino students, DR students are incompetent readers. They were No. 74 in reading. Our students were No. 76.
(December 25, 2024, Philippine Daily Inquirer Letters to the Editor)**
