By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
Long used to telling tall tales whenever it is put on the spot over our moribund basic education such as recently when the World Bank (WB) reported that our learning poverty or the incidence of 10 year olds who could not read and understand simple texts has hit 90 percent in 2021 and getting away with it, in an official statement, the Department of Education (DepEd) claimed it is resolving the problem through the Bawat Bata Bumabasa reading campaign and the Every Child A Reader Program (ECARP).
The DepEd’s implied claim it is religiously implementing the ECARP is baseless. One of the policies of the ECARP per DepEd Memorandum No. 324, series of 2004, is DepEd Order No. 45, series of 2002 which “enforces the policy that every child should be a reader by Grade 3 and that no child shall be promoted to the next higher grade unless he/she manifests mastery of basic literacy skills.” That the policy continues to be in effect is confirmed by the fact that last year, the DepEd-CAR and DepEd-Region 10 issued “No Read, No Pass” Policies – Regional Memorandum No. 013-2020 for CAR and Regional Memorandum No. 153, series of 2020, for Region X – enforcing it.
This means that if the DepEd is indeed implementing the ECARP, the country would have zero learning poverty as no non-reader or frustration reader would be allowed to leave Grade 3. Ten year olds are either in Grade 4 or Grade 5. How come did these non-readers got promoted if as claimed by the DepEd, the ECARP is being enforced?
In fact, more importantly, the DepEd should explain to the country why it maintains the ECARP when it is the root cause of the downward spiral of our reading literacy. This became inevitable because eventually, the DepEd also discarded the ECARP reading cut off and started promoting illiterates to any grade including high school. That explains the expanding non-reader population in high school and lately, the 90 percent learning poverty reported by WB.
Previous to the ECARP, Filipino children in private and public schools learned to read in Grade 1 because, pursuant to the traditional “No Read, No Move” Policy, learners cannot be promoted to Grade 2 unless they could read.
To prove that even public schools were significantly better off before the DepEd tinkered with the traditional beginning reading standard, a national reading profile data from the Bureau of Elementary Education of the DepEd published in the UNESDOC Digital Library, shows that the national non-reader incidence in 2005 was 1.74 percent and 2.56 percent in 2006 (“The Philippines country case study” by Rhona B. Caoli-Rodriguez, 2007). Now compare that with the 90 percent learning poverty afflicting our schools.
It is mind-boggling that after witnessing millions of school children struggling to belatedly learn to read in the higher grades including in high school, the DepEd still denies it’s insane to give the Filipino child the complete freedom to choose when he or she wants to cross over to literacy because like the 90 percent current learning poverty incidence would show us, a great majority take the important milestone for granted.
The DepEd could not also be unaware that pupils in private schools still learn to read in Grade 1 because the owners and authorities of these institutions wisely elected the tested “No Read, No Move” Policy over the ECARP.
The DepEd should also explain how the mandate of the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013 to deliver “quality education that is globally competitive” could be fulfilled when we have 90 percent learning poverty thanks mostly to the ECARP. How at all can the Philippines compete with other countries when we have non-readers even in high school while their children learn to read in Grade 1?
Needless to say, given the very high correlation between reading proficiency and success in other subjects, the architects of the ECARP and those who continue to shamelessly implement it are responsible for the country’s fiascos in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment and in the 2019 Trends in International Mathematics and Science.
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