By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
In a recent press release titled “Gatchalian calls for urgent K-12 curriculum reform,” Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, chair of the Senate Basic Education, Arts and Culture Committee, warned we cannot expect better results in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) in 2021 “if no significant reforms are implemented in the K-12 curriculum.” We fully agree that to improve our chances in the Pisa, we need to immediately repair the K-12 but we disagree that the results of such changes will already impact the 2021 Pisa simply because curriculum adjustments take time to be felt specially so that in this case, the students who will be taking the exams have been exposed to the unreformed K-12 Curriculum except for school year 2020-2021 and that’s even granting that the reforms will be effected before then.
If the concern is avoiding a recurrence of our appalling showing in the last Pisa, what the Senate could do is compel the Department of Education (DepEd) to immediately clear high school of non-readers and struggling readers. We make this suggestion because naturally, students with questionable reading abilities cannot do well in any academic exams and it is public knowledge that we have illiterates in high school. Even the DepEd itself admits this disturbing reality. Given this situation, there is a high probability that some of our Pisa takers in 2018 had questionable reading skills or were even non-readers.
If the Senate wants specifics on how the DepEd’s bungling its function and responsibility to teach the basic skill of reading impacted our performance in last Pisa, the government could request the Pisa to share its assessment of the reading proficiency levels of the Filipino examinees. There are items in the test which require the takers to answer in their own words which tell their reading ability or lack of it.
But even without confirmation from the Pisa, known facts about the issue – in the subject press release, Sen. Gatchalian stated that one of the results of the congested K-12 Curriculum is “the continuous presence of non-readers in the higher grades” – are compelling enough for the Senate to urge the DepEd to belatedly act on the recommendation made by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies, the state think tank, in February 2019 for the agency to stop the practice of sending non-readers to high school. Corollary to the policy, the DepEd should also immediately address the case of non-readers and frustration level readers already in high school with the end in view of sparing our high schools of illiteracy beginning next school year which definitely would give us a better chance in the next Pisa considering the near certainty we had non-readers among our takers in 2018.
Given the DepEd’s proven propensity to disregard its own policies and standards and/or gross incompetence in the enforcement thereof, it will do well for the Senate to provide for the close supervision and monitoring of the implementation of the policy. DepEd Order No. 45, series of 2002, states that only those who have mastered the basic literacy skills could be promoted to Grade 4 and the K-12 Curriculum (DepEd Order No. 021, series of 2019) vests the reading competency in Grades 1 and 2 and yet we have non-readers even in high school. That’s how brazenly irresponsible DepEd treats its own policies and standards.**
