By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
But these empirical evidence that high completion rate is worthless when it comes to actual learning among students was lost on the DepEd as it continued pursuing 100 percent completion rate as though there is no tomorrow such that by SY 2021-2022, the agency almost copped its Holy Grail with the completion rate reaching 99.83 percent per its performance and target report submitted to Congress relative to the PBB. On the other hand, the result of the 2022 PISA showed that only 21 percent of the country’s students made Level 2 across the three subjects as compared to the 73 percent average among all the participating countries for a gap of 52 percentage points.
Neither has these new reminders of the folly of the completion rate performance indicator brought the DepEd to its senses because for SY 2022-2023, DepEd had reported to Congress an elementary school level completion rate of 99.56 percent and is targeting 95 percent for SY 2024-2025.
In a matter of 12 years, through its single-minded and sustained efforts to attain 100 percent completion rate, the DepEd was able to raise the indicator from 72 percent to the peak of 99.83 percent or by 27.83 percentage points (38.65 percent) but during the same period, the NAT MPS has descended to its lowest level and the country was embarrassed internationally again and again due to the multi-year learning gaps of its students.
To iterate, the policies of the DepEd behind the phenomenon of the multitudes of students with proven severe learning gaps could not be unintended or accidental as again and again empirical evidence have shown that the pursuit of quantity at the expense of quality is detrimental and yet the agency continues to irrationally cling to the discredited, devastating and insane completion rate performance indicator.
As another proof that the DepEd is hell-bent on maintaining the mass promotion practice, long before the 2024 FLEMMS results triggered a public discussion on the practice of mass promotion, the DepEd had been asked to address the issue at least twice but the agency did not heed the calls.
In February 2019, the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), through the policy note “Pressures on Public School Teachers and Implications on Quality,” confirmed the existence of an unofficial mass promotion policy alleging the practice weakened the quality of education because it enabled “even students who failed exams or skipped half of the year’s school days can get promoted” some of whom “end up in seventh grade without knowing how to read for comprehension.” The PIDS stopped short of recommending the stoppage of the practice but had
specifically suggested to the DepEd to stop its practice of sending non-readers to high school. The DepEd did not acknowledge the finding and the recommendation of the state think tank and instead continued with its practice of allowing reading laggards to graduate from the elementary and accommodating then in high school.
In May 2023, the advocacy groups Philippine Business for Education and the Alliance of Concerned Teachers denounced the mass promotion practice and called for its stoppage because of its adverse effects on learning outcomes. In response, Undersecretary and Spokesperson Michael Poa issued a blanket denial of the existence of a DepEd policy which allows mass promotion (“DepEd commits to address concerns on ‘mass promotion’”, Manila Bulletin, June 16, 2023). He promised that the DepEd will take action on the matter but never did until former Secretary Sara Duterte stepped out.
Based on the experience of the country since 2002 when the DepEd discarded the traditional merit-based grade progression system in favor of automatic or mass promotion, quality education and the practice of mass promotion cannot co-exist. And therefore, for so long as the mass promotion practice exist in public schools, there simply is no way that the intent of Republic Act No. 10533 to make the country’s basic education globally competitive can be realized because obviously, low quality education is automatically out of the running.
In the specific area of literacy, for comparison, there is no mention of non-readers during the pre-DepEd era in existing records. In its EDCOM II Year Two Report, the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II) cited that EDCOM I, its predecessor which was convened in 1991, had recommended “creating and administering the National Achievement Test (NAT) to evaluate student progress: functional literacy by the end of Grade 4, scholastic achievement by the end of Grade 6, and readiness for vocational and tertiary education by the senior year of high school.”
Based on the recommendation, at that time, learners were expected to achieve functional literacy by Grade 4. Relative to this, there were no indications in EDCOM I’s report “Making Education Work: An Agenda for Reform” that the teaching and learning of reading was a cause for concern during that period. These statements on pages xiv and 9, respectively, bear this observation out: “This Report is far from clinical and objective. But we do not apologize for its tone. How can we be detached when we are faced with evidence that our young people revert to illiteracy because their instruction is indifferent?”; “Most of those who drop out of the early grades lapse into illiteracy.”
Based on the quotes, it is clear that the problem of the EDCOM I with regards to literacy was reversion to illiteracy and not failure to teach and to learn literacy like now. **To be continued
