By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
More than two weeks after they tripped over each other trying to assure the country that the literacy problem in Bicol is not really as bad as reported by the Philippine Daily Inquirer in its story “70,000 Bicol pupils can’t read – DepEd,” (February 17, 2020) Department of Education (DepEd) officials still have to comment on the information in the report that 37 of the 600 plus Grade 7 students of the Pagasa National High School in Legazpi City “did not know how to read.”
Their silence on the detail is strange because the existence of the 37 Grade 7 non-readers smashes to pieces the defenses they tried to put up in the aftermath of the expose. Take the case of the statement of Secretary Leonor Briones that the problem of the Bicol pupils is not that they could not read but they have difficulty comprehending explaining that “the PHIL-IRI is an annual diagnostic tool used by DepEd to ascertain the student’s level of comprehension and to determine if their level of understanding is appropriate for their school level.” With that sizable number of illiterate elementary graduates enrolling in a high school right in the center of the region, how in the world could DepEd proclaim the problem of those pupils referred to in the news report is not illiteracy but just lack of comprehension?
The Pagasa National High School non-reader population also renders futile the DepEd officials’ attempt to downplay the magnitude of the alleged portion of the Bicol pupil population who could not read pointing out that 70,000 is only 4.22 percent of the 1.8 learners in the region. That’s because if more or less 6 percent of the Grade 7 in a high school right in Legazpi City could not read at the start of this school year, it is reasonable to assume that the overall high school non-reader incidence of the region could be higher. Relevant to this, according to the report of the DepEd on our performance in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the takers in the urban areas outperformed those from the rural areas by 42 points in Reading Literacy.
In the light of the Pagasa National High School non-reader data, the attempt of DepEd Regional Director Gilbert Sadsad to clarify the issue by referring to the subject pupils as “struggling readers” instead of “non-readers” does not hold water, even laughable. What’s the point of using a euphemism for the word “non-reader” when there are non-readers in the secondary in the region?
Sadsad’s clarification was very revealing in a way the official did not intend. First, it in effect admitted that the DepEd reading cut off is being violated in Bicol. Under the Every Child a Reader Program (ECARP), the anchor of all reading program and initiatives of the DepEd, no child should be promoted to Grade 4 unless he manifests mastery in the basic literacy skills which means non-readers and struggling readers are out of place from Grade 4 up. Second, mass promotion is being practiced in Bicol because how else did those non-readers and struggling readers found themselves in Grade 4 up? Third, Sadsad accepted that a learner can undergo the Phil-IRI process several times and remain a non-reader indicating a weakness in the Phil-IRI system or something wrong in its implementation or a combination of both.
The report quoted Jeremy Cruz, principal of the Pagasa National High School, as saying they solved their illiteracy problem by organizing a class exclusively for non-readers and slow readers, a common practice among public high schools and private high schools whose students come from public elementary schools. With their separate calls for the release of the nationwide Phil-IRI results in the wake of the exposure of the Bicol reading situation quickly rejected by the DepEd, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian and the Alliance of Concerned Teachers partylist should instead demand for the nationwide population of these classes for Grade 7 non-readers and slow readers. The DepEd cannot parry the demand for the data on ground of the lack of uniformity in the manner the non-readers were uncovered because even a spelling drill of the most simple words can betray illiteracy. In fact, in most cases, the inability to read is already evident in just the filling of the enrolment form. **
