By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
In the “Pag-asa sa Pagbasa” episode of the Eye Witness program of the GMA on September 1, Rosalina Villaneza, director for DepEd Learning and Teaching Division, defended the policy of the Department of Education of making the passing or retention of pupils as one of the basis for rating the performance of teachers. It was implied in the documentary that the policy contributed to the non-reader problem because if teachers do not pass students, they will get flak from the parents and be blamed by school authorities and in addition, would have to spend their summer vacation teaching the children who were unable to cope. Villaneza reasoned that somehow, the failure of students reflect on the performance of the teacher because he has been trained by the DepEd for the job and it is impossible that if he had done what he should be doing in the 10 months, the students would not still know how to read.
This is the convenient “Teacher Factor” excuse the DepEd uses to deflect the blame for the failure of the system. If a student could not read at the end of the school year, the teacher’s supervisors would say that he is to blame because had he been doing his job, all his students would be able to read. This is yet another of DepEd’s unsound policies but let’s leave it for another column. What I would now ask Villaneza and all DepEd officials who reason the same way when confronted with the failure of the DepEd as an institution is this: Granting that the learning or inability of a child to learn to read is the ultimate responsibility of his teacher, who is checking if indeed the pupils being promoted and therefore assumed to be able to read could really read? Who is validating the glowing reports from the schools to see if they are a reflection of the actual delivery of learning happening in the classrooms there?
More to the point: Had anyone checked on the reading skills of all the Grade 7 non-readers of the Sauyo National High School while they were still in Grade 4 or even as late as days when it was being decided whether they will graduate from the elementary or not? Had anyone done that, the embarrassing documentary would not have been produced for want of a subject because what sane educator would think it is right to pass on to the next grade a Grade 4 or a Grade 6 pupil who could not read?
Just to prove that no mechanism to check on the reading skills of pupils in the National Capital Region existed or even if there was one, there was no intent to apply it, in 2014, and possibly in reaction to publicized developments in Valenzuela City where the LGU allotted P300M to turn things around because it has been discovered that eight out of 10 Grade 6 pupils there were frustrated readers and one out 10 was a non-reader. The DepEd there issued Regional Memorandum No. 067, series of 2014, imposing a “No Read, No Pass Policy” under which teachers who pass a Grade 2 pupil who could not read in Filipino and a Grade 3 who could not read in both Filipino and English “will be dealt with accordingly.” The students featured in the “I Witness” documentary were in Grade 2 in 2014 and had anyone checked on their reading skills pursuant to the policy, they would have been stuck in Grade 3 indefinitely until they could read.
The mere fact that DepEd-NCR issued that memorandum shows that it is well known that non-readers are being passed to Grade 4 in the region but how come even when the policy was set in place, there was no application of the same as evidenced by the current non-readers in the Sauyo National High School? That’s because the people who were supposed to see to it that the memorandum be implemented starting from Director IV Luz Almeda who signed its issuance did not do their duty. If this sad commentary on the quality of the educational system now in place happened in a region where there is an express “No Read, No Pass Policy,” then how much more in the regions where no such policy exists?
The overall result is it can now be said that DepEd accomplishment reports coming from the lowest rungs all the way up to Pasig are not validated in as far as how the actual transfer of knowledge was taking place and in some cases just like those of the schools and districts where those non-readers in the Sauyo National High School in Novaliches came from, what they contain could be near the opposite of reality. **
