By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
After launching the Every Child a Reader Program (ECARP) which aims to make every child an independent reader by Grade 3 in 2001, the education department came up with measures to support the program. DECS Order No. 34, series of 2001, mandates all pupils to read at least one book in the vernacular and at least one in English during the school year. DepEd Order No. 45, series of 2002, enforced the policy that school children be readers by Grade 3 and that no child be promoted to Grade 4 unless he shows mastery of basic literacy skills. Too, the Philippine Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI), a nationally validated reading proficiency assessment tool, was also unveiled in 2004 to strengthen the implementation of the ECARP.
Up until the issuance of the 2009 Phil-IRI Manual and Users’ Guide, the class reading profile form had a column for non-readers but beginning with the manual issued in 2011, the non-reader reading level was scrapped. It was clear from this amendment that the Department of Education (DepEd) started laboring under the delusion that it is able to teach all pupils to read. Nothing could be more preposterous and detached from reality because by that time, some high schools were already maintaining special classes for non-readers and slow readers.
To make things worse, the 2011 Phil-IRI manual also altered the original purpose of the tool of helping ensure that no child without basic literacy skills be promoted to Grade 4 with the following statement on page 2: “The findings are to be regarded only as ‘very tentative indicators of pupil’s reading levels and competencies to modify, when necessary, a classroom reading program’ (Miller, 1995). They should never be the sole bases for promoting or retaining the child in the grade level.” This statement confirms the allegation that under the present DepEd watch, a child could pass to the next grade even if he does not know how to read for so long as he is active in other class activities. To our current DepEd educators, one could build his education sans the skill referred to as foundation of all learning.
These two changes – the scrapping of the non-reader reading level and the downgrading of the crucial role of the Phil-IRI – undermined the Grade 3 reading demarcation line there being no more way to screen non-readers pursuant to DepEd Order No. 45, series of 2002, simply because the Phil-IRI results no longer list non-readers.
To make the emasculation of the Phil-IRI almost complete, in the Revised Phil-IRI Manual issued in 2018, the DepEd also deleted the old reporting requirements contained in DepEd Memoranda Numbers 66 and 255, series of 2005, and still appearing in the 2011 Phil-IRI Manual for the results to be consolidated at the school, division and regional levels for submission to the Elementary Education (BEE) for the preparation of a national reading profile. Consistent with the deletion, DepEd Order No. 14, series of 2018, which gives the guidelines for the administration of the Revised Phil-IRI and the manual itself emphasized that the Phil-IRI is purely a classroom and school business. There is no more reference to policy making. This is a sharp departure from purpose of the output of the Phil-IRI as stated in DepEd Memorandum No. 153, series of 2006, as follows: “The Phil-IRI results shall provide educators, policy makers and teachers information on pupils’ reading proficiency and shall serve as bases for appropriate intervention.”
At a time that the capability of the DepEd to teach reading is deteriorating very fast and quick, decisive, vigorous and more importantly, sound response is needed to turn things around, the national DepEd leadership wants less or no involvement at all in the delivery of the said competency. No wonder the DepEd now looks like a headless chicken in the face of the reading crisis which to begin with was caused by its silly policies.
Had not later DepEd officials taken liberties with the original intent and reporting requirement of the Phil-IRI, the alarming decline in the capability of public schools to impart reading skills would have been detected earlier it being that the national DepEd office would have been constantly updated of the prevailing reading proficiency levels in the country giving it a chance to respond. Had the profile format maintained the non-reader column, it would have been easy for schools to separate the non-readers from readers in Grade 3 thereby enabling the tight guarding of the new reading border.
Why the DepEd chose to undermine its own reading assessment tool flinging open the doors of the intermediate and secondary levels to non-readers and frustration level readers is difficult to fathom.**
