By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
As the Department of Education (DepEd) grapples with the consequence of its two-decade experiment with the “no retention” or “mass promotion” practice after the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II) called for an end to the practice, it would do well for the agency and the rest of the country to consider how local private schools and the education system of Vietnam handled the temptation to go for quantity instead of quality.
As could be gleaned from the “EDCOM II Final Report,” for the most part of the 20th century, the quality of education offered by public schools was superior to that of private schools. However, since then, the situation has reversed with the gap reaching its widest in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 where the public schools were at the level of the 80th placed country while the private schools were at par with the 51st ranked country.
On the other hand, the experience of Vietnam in the field of education is relevant to the Philippines because among developing countries, the former is the runaway top performer in international student assessments. In the PISA 2022, Vietnam was ranked 34th in the overall standings to the Philippines’ 77th place.
Money is not the crucial factor in the performances of the three education systems. In fact, according former Education Secretary Edilberto de Jesus, in the Philippines, private school education costs less than public school education (“Basic education costs higher in public schools,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, November 3, 2022). Vietnam was recorded to have spent USD 13,800.00 per student for the PISA 2022 as against the Philippines’ USD 11,030.00 for a difference of only USD 2,770.00 or 20.07 percent.
The two main differences between the schools run by the DepEd on one hand and local private schools and Vietnamese schools on the other are their timetables in the learning of reading and their degree of adherence to learning standards.
While the K to 12 Curriculum provides that learners be reading in English with comprehension by Grade 3 (English Curriculum Guide, page 53), in practice, the DepEd allows non-readers to reach high school. Despite the curriculum providing that learners be functionally literate by Grade 6 (English Curriculum Guide, page 125), last May, the Philippine Statistics Authority bared that 21 percent of senior high school graduates are functionally illiterate.
On the other hand, generally, private schools ensure that their first graders acquire the fundamental skill. As for Vietnam, it absolutely does not allow reading laggards to leave Grade 1 (“Beginning to Read in Vietnamese: Kindergarten Precursors to First Grade Fluency and Reading Comprehension,” PubMed Central).
The difference in how they value reading is reflected in their ranks in Reading in the PISA 2022: public schools were at the level of the 80th ranked country, private schools at the level of the 49th county and Vietnam ranked 34th.
In the past two decades, the DepEd has enthusiastically practiced “no retention” or “mass promotion” assessing the performance of schools and teachers through the “zero retention,” “zero repetition” and “100 percent promotion” indicators. On the other hand, private schools generally shunned mass promotion. Vietnam maintains a hardline stance against mass promotion. If failing students cannot hurdle the summer remedials, they are retained. (“Help students not ‘sit in the wrong class,’” Vietnam.Vn, August 5, 2023)
The highly effective war of the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) against mass promotion started in 2015 when it directed education authorities nationwide to stop the practice after it found out that there were six “illiterate” high school students in Quang Tri province. (“MOET vows to prevent students from ‘sitting in the wrong class’” (VietNamNet Global, April 20, 2015).
The MoET clamped down on mass promotion on the basis of six cases. As for the DepEd, based on its own findings that majority of Grades 4-10 students are struggling readers (EDCOM II Final Report, page 156), millions are being mass promoted annually but it does not mind and does not lift a finger. The rest of the country should force DepEd to start doing it right for a change.**
