By Estanislao C. Albano Jr.
Going by how it so far has acted on the problem of illiteracy in high school, the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II) apparently thinks it can resolve the phenomenon even if the Department of Education (DepEd) does not apply grade-level standards but instead pass reading laggards to the next grade level routinely.
Last July, due to the country’s learning gap of 5.5 years, the EDCOM II had urged the DepEd to suspend the regular academic program by eight to 12 weeks to give way to an uninterrupted literacy and numeracy recovery initiative for Grades 7-10 students. House Resolution No. 1805 in which the action was couched did not concomitantly push the DepEd to henceforth enforce the prescribed literacy and numeracy grade-level standards and thereby permanently stop the flow of non-reader and non-numerates to high school. As a matter of fact, the EDCOM II has never addressed the necessity of implementing the learning standards although the presence of literacy and numeracy laggards in high school is a glaring proof that the DepEd is utterly remiss in that respect.
Clearly, the following assessments by the World Bank (WB) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) of the education systems of countries with rock bottom reading literacy levels have not registered on the EdCom II:
“All children should be able to read by age 10. Reading is a gateway for learning as the child progresses through school—and conversely, an inability to read slams that gate shut. Beyond this, when children cannot read, it’s usually a clear indication that school systems aren’t well organized to help children learn in other areas such as math, science, and the humanities. (“What’s learning poverty,” WB)
“All these countries are still far from the objective of equipping all students with the minimum level of reading skills that enables further education and full participation in knowledge-based societies.” (referring to the nine countries with the lowest reading scores in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which includes the Philippines) (“PISA 2018 Results (Volume I): What Students Know and Can Do,” OECD, page 92)
The foregoing are damning descriptions of the country’s education system and are therefore clear signals for us to overhaul the same but unfortunately for us, the agency tasked with investigating the learning crisis and recommending reforms to address it can only manage a stopgap and harebrained solution.
It is very appalling that the commission cannot even demand that the DepEd enforce the K to 12 Curriculum reading standard when this only requires learners to be able to read in English by Grade 3 while before the DepEd era, the basic education arm of the government had no problem retaining Grade 1 learners who could not read in English even multiple times in keeping with the traditional “No Read, No Move” policy.
For sure with the inquiries it has already made, the EDCOM II knows that prior to the DepEd era, the education arm of the government took learning standards seriously to such extent that for a time, our public school system was known as the region’s “model of public education.” As late as 2002, per DepEd Order No. 25, s. 2002, there were no non-readers in the elementary grades but only some pupils who could not comprehend what they read, which is worlds apart from the current situation where roughly 20 percent of high school students either could not comprehend what they read or worse, could not read at all.
It is therefore a big letdown that entering the last 12 months of its life, the EDCOM II is still acting as though it can achieve its mandate to make our education system globally competitive set forth in RA No. 11899 despite DepEd’s contempt for standards. It is very disturbing and alarming there appears to be no one in the commission with enough common sense to realize that in international student assessments, competitiveness is tied to the level of adherence to standards and countries which are soft on their students eat the dust of those which put their learners through the wringer.
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