By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
Whoever among Senators Sherwin Gatchalian and Joel Villanueva and Senator-elect Pia Cayetano who are said to be jockeying for the position will end up as chair of the Committee on Education, he or she should restore the committee to relevance quickly because during the watch of Senator Francis Escudero, the committee was not even aware of one of the most pressing education concerns. Or worse, it was aware but just did not care.
I refer to the growing number of non-readers in high school. One of the five Department of Education (DepEd) field offices which so far acknowledged in their websites they are affected by the phenomenon is the Schools Division of Catanduanes which is in Bicol. In a post introducing its program “LEAP 8,” the division office said that according to results of Philippine Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI), the DepEd reading assessment test, there are frustration level readers and non-readers “in all grade levels.” How this striking lead from his home region escaped Escudero’s notice only meant he did not have his ear on the ground for critical issues the committee must address.
It is also staggering that the committee including their respective staff missed or thought the contents of the documentary “Pag-asa sa Pagbasa” aired by GMA 7 on September 1, 2018 not worth looking into. The documentary which spotlighted the roomful of Grade 7 students at the Sauyo High School in Novaliches, Quezon City last school year who were classified as either frustration level readers or non-readers was riveting to ordinary citizens but apparently, it did not catch and hold the interest of the committee.
It is possible that the dismissive attitude of the members of the committee sprung from the erroneous assumption that a high school non-reader is normal and no big deal in the country. If this is the case, then it only proves that the senators in charge of education matters did not do their assignment. A simple research would have revealed that the problem only began when the DepEd scrapped the “No Read, No Move” policy for Grade 1 and replaced it with the “zero non-reader in Grade 4” policy in 2001. While the old policy was in effect, non-readers in Grade 2 were a rarity.
Actually, no research is needed to establish the gravity of the problem. All the members would have needed to do was recall if there were Grade 2 pupils who could not read when they were in the grades. It appears now that the sight of Filipino youth only learning to read in high school is not alarming or shocking enough for them to even just consult his memory for comparison.
In the same token, it is possible that the gross difference between the time pupils in public schools and private schools attain reading skills did not strike the committee as material for its purposes. There are no non-readers in Grade 2 in the private schools and there are even private schools where the kindergarten kids could already read. Had the committee bothered to inquire as to how come the stark contrast, they would have found that private schools defy the lunatic “zero non-reader in Grade 4” innovation of the DepEd and stick to the old school wisdom of teaching the child to read at the earliest possible time.
Surely, the country cannot afford another Senate Committee on Education composition which either takes lightly or, for whatever reason, refuses to address the markedly eroded ability of the DepEd to teach reading because obviously, education could not proceed unless a child first learns to read. Moreover, despite the overwhelming evidence, the DepEd continues to pretend all is well in this respect which means there is no hope for solution of the problem from within the agency. **
