By Danilo P. Padua, PhD
Belonging to the bottom 2 of the world ranking on creative thinking skills of junior students is definitely a source of embarrassment.
That’s actually the rank of our students in the latest assessment released by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) among 81 countries worldwide, last June 18, 2024 but made known locally only 2 days later. The program is coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The Philippine score is 14.2, higher than only Albania. In contrast, Singapore ranked the highest with a score of 41.0. Korea, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are the next best ranked countries. The average score is 33, way much higher than ours!
The result is really humiliating.
Our ASEAN neighbors performed even better than us. We can not blame them if they belittle (not openly of course) our educational system, as I often discern from them before, in international fora.
Creative thinking is defined by PISA as the competence to engage productively in the generation, evaluation and improvement of ideas that can result in original and effective solutions, advances in knowledge and impactful expressions of imagination.
That should be carefully studied by our DepEd.
PISA found that creative thinking skill is positively correlated to Math, Reading and Science. The present result and the one released some years earlier confirms such correlation. The earlier one showed that the Philippines also ranked among the bottom ten countries in reading comprehension, math and science. This could be a more meaningful area of investigation by the House and the Senate rather than some other things that properly belong to the courts of law.
It should be very relevant for the DepEd and other concerned agencies to highly consider the following suggestions from PISA. Only 5 out of their 10 suggestions (with some editing) are given here: 1. Keep schools open longer (or less closures?) for more student learning. Systems that spared more students from longer school closures scored higher while their students enjoyed a greater sense of belonging at school; 2. Prepare students for autonomous learning. Students whose teachers were available when schools were closed scored higher in mathematics and were more confident about self-directed learning; 3. Limit the distractions caused by using digital devices in class. Students who spent up to one hour per day on digital devices for learning activities in school scored 14 points higher on average in mathematics than students who spent no time. Enforced cell phone bans in class may help reduce distractions but can also hinder the ability of students to self-regulate their use of the devices; 4. Provide additional support to struggling students instead of requiring them to repeat a grade. Some 30% of students did not report that the teacher regularly gave extra help when students needed it and continued teaching until students understood; 5. Ensure adequate, high-quality education staff and material.
We take pride in being the texting capital of the world, and ranks high in the time spent in our social media engagements? We should think again. Texting will cost much time; extended hours in FB, Twitter(X), IG, etc “addiction” are counterproductive. All of us should cut down on these so we could devote more time to more productive endeavors; have more interactions with children and help mold the young minds of our kids better.
DepEd should take a hard look at the number of hours spent by teachers in actual teaching. It should be lessened so they could do other things. They are also required to submit so many reports, sometimes with very little lead time. This makes them less effective in their teaching, and reduces their time to attend to their students while not teaching.
Am sorry to say this, but the proliferation of festivals I think is contributory to the lack of creative thinking skills of students. Many will just be devoting more time to the preparation for such festivals depriving more time to be spent for the kids. Students will probably be more actively involved to attain greater success of such festivals. If those are the activities where students and the kids will often see, that’s the model that they will likely store in their young minds, making them less creative as they grow older.
By the way, the coincidental resignation of the current DepEd Secretary, VP Sara Carpio-Duterte last June 20, is one example of how programs in the education department can be unnecessarily put on hold. Imagine a new curriculum program, the Matatag curriculum, given much time for planning and about to be started, become suddenly orphaned by its proponent! Loss of time and resources, especially if the incoming secretary doesn’t buy into the idea of the program. **
