By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
(Published in February 4, 2025 Philippine Daily Inquirer issue)
According to Memorandum Circular No. 2012-1 of the AO No. 25 Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF), the body implementing the Performance-Based Incentive System (PBIS) for government employees established under Executive Order No. 80 in 2012, the foremost purpose of the Performance-Based Bonus (PBB) is to “Recognize and reward exemplary performance in the public sector to enhance service delivery by the bureaucracy.”
But in a swindle which dwarfs the pork barrel scam many times over, the Department of Education (DepEd) is getting rewarded with billions in PBB annually when it is fumbling its most basic function of teaching reading skills. For instance, the agency received P11.6B PBB in 2021, the same year the World Bank reported that the country’s learning poverty rate or the portion of 10-year olds who cannot read and understand simple texts had hit 90 percent from the 69.5 percent in 2019.
This means the DepEd manpower are incompetent in teaching reading because most of our 10-year olds are in Grade 5 with the minority in Grade 4. Under the grade level reading standards of the K to 12 Curriculum, at the end of Grade 3, learners should be reading in English with comprehension and by Grade 4, reading independently in the language.
The DepEd also collected the 2018 PBB despite the fact that that year our students ranked last in reading in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa). Eighty percent of them fell below Level 2, the minimum level in the reading proficiency scale in the test. This, too, was a solid proof of the abysmal ineptness of DepEd as Level 2 is comparable to the K to 12 Curriculum Grade 6 grade level English reading standard. Filipino Pisa takers are all in high school.
In 2019 when our Grade 5 students placed second to the last in reading in the Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics (SEA-PLM) survey where 27 percent of them were found to be practically illiterate, DepEd officials and employees had no qualms pocketing the billions in taxpayers’ money they did not deserve.
For purposes of the 2023 PBB which is still being processed and other future releases of the incentive, let me point out to the AO No. 25 IATF that not only is the DepEd fleecing taxpayers through the undeserved bonuses but due to its pathetic failure to teach schoolchildren the fundamental skill, the agency is also forcing the government to unnecessarily spend significantly more to get the job done.
One of the components of the National Learning Camp (NLC), a program “aimed at addressing learning loss” launched in 2023, is an intervention activity for non-readers and non-numerates. It is reported that the NLC cost the government P1.8B in 2024.
Also in 2023, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) came up with the “Tara, Basa Tutoring Program” (TBTP) which addresses literacy issues by hiring financially challenged college students to help Grade 1 struggling readers or incoming Grade 2 non-readers become literate. The TBTP does not come cheap specially so that it has been declared a flagship program of the government last year and will now cover the entire country.
On the other hand, the ARAL Program, which was established under the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning (ARAL) Program Act enacted last year, will hire teachers, para-teachers, and pre-service teachers to enhance literacy and numeracy competencies for Grades 1 to 10. Needless to say, this program will also entail funding.
The AO No. 25 IATF should simply ask itself if an agency which pathetically fails to deliver on its most basic task and in the process, betray its mandate and the intended beneficiaries and likewise bloat the budget for the performance of the subject task is deserving of PBB. It is also important for the task force to consider that for generations before the DepEd era, without outside help, the education arm of the government was able to make all learners read in Grade 1 as well as impart other competencies per the curriculum timetable.
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