By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
The undersigned notes that in their explanations of the debacles of the country in international student assessments, national DepEd officials have never admitted that poor literacy is the Achilles heel of the country in local and international student assessments but at least three DepEd field offices have blamed poor reading literacy for the poor showing of their students in such tests.
The post in the official Facebook page of the DepEd-Region 10 dated July 15, 2019 and titled “Care for NorMin Readers Hoists Flagship Program of DepEd X’s Chief” tagged poor reading skills as the main culprit in the disappointing scores of the region in the NAT.
DepEd-Zamboanga del Norte Schools Division Memorandum dated August 15, 2019 states: “After a thorough evaluation of the results of the diagnostic reading test conducted upon enrolment of the school year among Grade 7 entrants, the office wishes to inform all the elementary and secondary schools as well as all the districts of the alarming results (Refer to the enclosure.), which among others is the main cause of the students’ poor performance in the National Achievement Test (NAT).”
In the document “Initial Policy Guidelines in the Implementation of Reading First for Region 1
Program” attached to Regional Order 1477, series of 2021, issued on December 22, 2021, DepEd-Region 1 stated: “Intriguingly, the results of the PISA and the TIMSS conformed with the results of the National Achievement Test which likewise showed that Filipino learners are lagging behind in Mathematics, English and Science and that this appears to be caused by gaps in reading comprehension.”
Clearly, the best readers are the best students and vice versa. This means that the intent of RA No. 10533 to make Philippine basic education globally competitive can never be achieved unless the mass promotion practice is first uprooted so that all Filipino public schoolchildren can begin to read in Grade 1 again like they used to do before the DepEd introduced mass promotion.
Afforded the unique opportunity to personally prove that the legislation you co-authored can indeed elevate the basic education of this country to world class status, it will be the height of irony if you do not fulfill your promise in your DepEd May 15, 2025 statement on the subject of mass promotion in the “Sonny Angara” Facebook page to act on the mass promotion practice so that promotion “should be earned with real learning.”
If the undersigned may suggest, since the DepEd ushered in the mass promotion practice through the abandonment of the “No Read, No Move Policy” in 2002, a good place to start the process of uprooting the mass promotion practice is to reinstate the time-honored policy. With the policy, all Filipino schoolchildren learned to read in Grade 1 for around a century and learners in most private schools still do so until now, thus there is no reason public schoolchildren could not do the same specially so that they have an advantage over pass generations in terms of Kindergarten education and the availability of significantly more beginning reading learning resources.
The undersigned is not alone in calling for the restoration of the “No Read, No Move Policy.” At least 50 of the teachers who reacted to your May 1, 2025 statement on the result of the FLEMMS posted in the “DepEd Philippines” Facebook page and your two posts. on the subject of mass promotion – in the “DepEd Philippines” Facebook page on May 7, 2025 and “Sonny Angara” Facebook page on May 15, 2025 – clamored for the restoration of the “No Read, No Move Policy.” It was clear that the teachers were referring to the traditional “No Read, No Move Policy” as some of them used the Filipino verb “ibalik” or return or restore in English. The word is inappropriate in the case of DepEd Order No. 45, s. 2002, because as already pointed out, DepEd never enforced the policy.
Also, some of the teachers specified in their comments that the policy be applied to Grade 1 learners and with two relating that the policy was still in place when they started teaching in Grade 1 in the 90s.
The undersigned argues that the “No Read, No Move Policy” aligns with the MATATAG Curriculum because unlike the K to 12 Curriculum, it has a separate Reading and Literacy subject in Grade 1. It is clear that at the end of Grade 1, a pupil should be able to read because the fourth quarter performance standard of the subject is as follows: “The learners automatically recognize sight words, decode words, express ideas; read sentences with appropriate speed, accuracy, and expression; and narrate personal experiences with one’s environment and content-specific topics.” Thus, needless to say, it would be a preposterous spectacle worthy of space in the Guinness Book of World Records if Filipino schoolchildren will be given passing grades in the subject even if they do not know how to read.
**To be continued
