By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
Without our private schools, the country would do even worse in international student assessments as public schools consistently miss the average score while private schools exceed the same. In the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) 2022, public school students obtained an overall score of 340.66 points. The average is 352.66 points. Private school students scored 412.33 points, thus the country ended up with an overall score of 352.66 points, landing it in the 77th spot instead of the 80th. This also happened in the Pisa 2018 and for sure in the 2019 Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics, 2019 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, and likewise in the National Admission Test (NAT).
The Department of Education (DepEd) and Second Congressional Commission on Education (EdCom II) apparently do not want the world to know that private schools bear public schools on their backs in international student assessments so they never openly acknowledge the fact. Worse, EdCom II insults private schools by making it appear they are in the same boat as public schools. It has been conducting endless consultations, but never with private elementary and high school educators.
The EdCom II and DepEd went out of their way to visit and purportedly learn from two Gapan City schools which made good in the NAT despite financial constraints, but are not interested in how private schools outdid public schools by 71.67 points and 29 notches in the Pisa 2022.
EdCom II insults, ignores PH basic education’s saving grace
In reaction to the dismal results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) 2022, Second Congressional Commission on Education (EdCom II) co-chairpersons Sherwin Gatchalian and Roman Romulo hailed the fact that the country managed to hold the line in the assessment amidst the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic. What they never bothered to acknowledge until now is the fact that it was our private schools which made the feat possible.
Public school students obtained an overall score of 340.66 points which was 12 points short of the national average and would have placed the Philippines second to the last of 81 countries in Pisa 2022. But with our private school students scoring 412.33 points, the country eked out an overall score of 352.66 landing it in the 77th spot instead of the 80th. The score of our private school students approximates that of the 51st ranked country.
Similarly in the Pisa 2018, our public school students attained 339.33 points. However, with our private school takers recording an overall score of 394.66, the country ended with an overall score of 350.
But even with Pisa data compellingly showing our private schools are not in the same boat as our public schools as the latter misses the average score while the former exceeds the same by a wide margin, the EdCom II which is supposed to ferret out and stand by the truth about the country’s education system is baselessly and unfairly lumping private schools with the schools run by the Department of Education (DepEd).
This statement ironically appears in the “EDCOM II Year One Report,” EdCom II’s most important publication so far: “More recently, the 2022 PISA results show that our performance remains the same. Grade 10 Filipinos scored lowest among all ASEAN countries in Math, Reading, and Science, besting only Cambodia with more than 75% of our learners scoring lower than Level 2, or the minimum level of proficiency in Math, Reading, and Science. This was the case for most of our schools, public or private.”
In its analysis of ASEAN Pisa 2022 data, the EdCom II overlooked the fact that our private school students bested Malaysian, Thai and Indonesian students. Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia obtained overall scores of 404.33, 394 and 369, respectively, all of which are lower than our private school students’ score of 412.33. Filipino private school students were also only 26.66 points behind the students of Brunei (439 points) and there is no shame in that as Brunei spends a whopping USD 207,300.00 per student between the ages of 6 to 15 compared to the Philippines’ USD 11,000.00.
In his article “Focusing on urgent education reforms” in the Philippine Daily Inquirer December 9, 2023 issue, EdCom II Executive Director Karol Mark Yee said they plan to visit schools that did well in the Pisa to learn their best practices. Apparently, EdCom II does not want to find out how private school students were able to separate themselves from public high school students by a massive 71.67 points and a forbidding 29-rung gap in the rankings in the Pisa 2022 as after almost a year, the body has yet to consult private high school educators on the subject.
Recently, the EdCom II was able to convince the DepEd to conduct an eight-week literacy and numeracy intervention program for Grades 7-10 laggards on account of its finding, among other reasons, that there are non-readers in Grades 7 and 8. But we have yet to hear the EdCom II ask private school educators what they are doing that their students buried public school students in Reading in the Pisa by 62 points in 2018 and by 83 points in 2022 and they have no non-readers starting in Grade 3 at the latest in contrast with public schools which even have non-readers in senior high school.
As proof that EdCom II has its head in the clouds, instead of conducting exhaustive consultations with the private school sector to elicit how they were able to develop students who could hold their own in international assessments, it chose to benchmark with Vietnam. Still at a loss on how to begin to close the 29-rung gap with our private schools, the EdCom II targets the formidable 34th placer as the country’s education model. If that’s not a wild fantasy, I do not know what is.
(Note: Something strange happened to this letter to the editor I submitted to the Philippine Daily Inquirer. What the paper published on December 3, 2024 was the transmittal – the first piece below. The second article is the actual letter.) **
