TABUK CITY, Kalinga – An incredible blunder by personnel of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) nearly cost the performing Department of Education (DepEd) regions including the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) their rankings in the National Achievement Tests (NATs) in 2016 and 2017 and at the same time misled the unwary as to the true state of education prevailing in individual regions.
The Cordillera Advocates for Real Education (CARE), a group of residents in the Cordillera crusading for reforms in the country’s basic education system, said that only one of the 56 scores in the two NATs was correctly matched with the corresponding region.
Upon spotting the mix up, the CARE wrote the PSA debunking the published data and then alerted the DepEd regional directors of CAR, NCR, Region 4A and Region 7, the most affected of the regions.
CAR, Region 7 and NCR were first, second and third in 2016 Grade 6 NAT and first, fourth and second, respectively, in 2017 but in the new data, CAR fell to No. 6 for both years, Region 7 was the tailender both years and the NCR dropped to No. 15 in 2016 and to No. 9 in 2017.
Similarly, Region 4A which was No. 7 in 2016 and No. 5 in 2017 per the old data was No. 17 in 2016 and No. 15 the following year in the new results.
On the other hand, CARAGA and Region 5 were the two regions which repeated in the Top 5 in the two years with CARAGA as No. 1 both years and Region 5 at second and then fourth. In the original data, CARAGA was at No. 16 both years and Region 5 was No. 17 in 2016 and No. 15 in 2017.
The Grade 10 NAT rankings underwent similar changes.
NCR which topped the 2017 exams sunk to No. 12 and second placer CAR is at No. 10, third placer Region 7 dropped to No. 16 and No. 5 Region 4A found itself in No. 12.
On the other hand, CARAGA which was No. 8 in the test in the old data rose to No. 2 and Region 5 which was in No. 12 jumped to No. 3.
The winners-turned-losers in the second results of the two NATs namely NCR, Region 4A, Region 7 and CAR were Top 4 among local regions in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in that order.
The rankings based on the conflicting data and likewise in the PISA are as follows: (Table 1):
In response to the CARE letter, CAR Regional Director May Eclar asked the PSA to review the data because they conflict with the results released by the DepEd national office to the region.
“Per document released by the DepEd on the NAT 6 and 10 results for SY 2014-2015 and SY 2016-2017, Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) for example obtained an overall MPS of 45.39 for NAT 6 for SY 2016-2017 but in the published 2019, the 45.39 MPS was ascribed to Region XIII (CARAGA). Same observations were also noticed on the NAT results for SY 2015-2016,” Eclar wrote.
Initially on June 29, the PSA deleted nine DepEd tables including the two tables containing the questioned data and on July 9, they took down the entire 2019 PSY.
On July 24, the PSA issued an errata not only on the NAT tables but five other DepEd tables.
In a letter, Undersecretary Claire Dennis Mapa, National Statistician and Civil Registrar General, had explained that the error in the NAT data occurred during the encoding proces because despite the fact that the PSA template and the source table listing the regions in different orders, the scores were entered into the PSA template as they appeared in the source document resulting to misalignment of the regions with their correct scores.
An annex to the letter of Mapa showed the alleged source table listing the regions starting from Region 1 to 13 followed by ARMM, CAR and NCR. The PSA template sequence begins with NCR, CAR then Regions 1 to 13 ending with ARMM.
While the letter of Mapa did not mention it and the errata merely used the word “updated” in reference to the corrective action taken on the other tables, the entries were also misaligned due to the same misstep.
The group said they found the explanation of the PSA hard to believe because for one, it means the employee who encoded the data did not have the common sense to check his work against the source documents. According to them, in the process of encoding itself, it is impossible for the employee not to be conscious that the names of the regions are not aligned in the PSA template and the DepEd source document.
They pointed out that the most incredible part was how the 2015 results which was already correctly published starting in the 2016 PSY was altered along with the results of 2016 and 2017 in the Grade 10 table while on the other hand, in the Grade 6 table, the 2015 result was correct while the results of 2016 and 2017 tests were not.
They said that going by the explanation of the PSA and taking the example of the NCR which is in first row in the PSA template and in the last row in the DepEd data, it would appear that the 2015 data, the encoder copied from the last row of the source document and then for 2016 and 2017, he picked the figures from the first row.
The CARE also asked how the PSA did not check the draft of the NAT tables for republication against the previous yearbooks.
The group also could not believe that in the case of the seven tables, there was a total failure of the data review and validation procedures which are a matter of course in any work place.
They said that had the tables been reviewed, the obvious statistical improbilities such ARMM leading all the regions in net enrollment rate for senior high school with 62.63 percent would have been immediately spotted.
The misalignment ascribed the scores of the NCR to ARMM in all the affected tables and that the actual average senior high net enrollment rate of ARMM for the period was 8.44 percent.
The group also finds it unthinkable that in the PSA where accuracy is supposed to be a watchword due to its mandate to collect and publish data, the elementary blunder went unnoticed through seven data tables.
They commented that if the PSA could fumble the DepEd data at a time when the local education system is in very dire straits where any effort for recovery should be based on facts, then one would wonder about the reliability of the other data in the publications of the PSA particularly the PSY.
The group also said that the fiasco has exposed not only the failure of the DepEd to take steps to ensure that its data in the yearbook are accurate but also to submit its data for inclusion in the annual statistics compilation up to dately.
The CARE cannot understand the error escaped the notice of the DepEd for over half a year when for one, the agency is represented in the PSA Board.
They observed that while rectifying the erroneous tables, the PSA filled up gaps in the basic education data in the PSY series specifically the student-teacher ratios and the number of textbooks distributed but that these revisions were not reflected in the errata nor covered by a separate notice.
The teacher-student ratios table which were stuck with the data of school years 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 from the 2015 to 2019 PSY edition now contains the data from school year 2012-2013 to 2017-2018.
The group noticed that the data of the population of the teachers and students were deleted leaving just the ratios on the tables commenting that as shown not only in the original 2019 PSY but likewise recent editions of the yearbook, the numbers of teachers and students are parts of the table.
Citing that the 2018 data was also added to Table 10.12, the group also commented that there is no justification at all for the DepEd not to have published the 2018 NAT and the 2018 Basic Education Exit Assessment (BEEA) since in the first place, these were already available when the DepEd submitted the data for publication in the 2019 PSY.
They pointed out that although the 2015 and 2016 yearbooks carried the NAT results of the next preceding year, the publication of the 2016 and 2017 NAT results was the first time the DepEd updated the NAT data in the PSY since 2016. **By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
