By Estanislao Albano Jr.
In 2010, the Department of Education (DepEd) acted on its mandate under Chapter 1, Section 7 (5) of Republic Act No. 9155 to conduct “national education research and studies” “which can become part of the basis for necessary reforms and policy inputs” by establishing the Basic Education Research Fund (BERF). The DepEd describes the BERF as a “a grant provided by the Department of Education to support education research in aid of evidence-based policy formulation.”
Under DepEd Order No. 43, series of 2015, each region gets an annual BERF allocation of P2M from the General Appropriations Act which are availed of by qualified research proponents at the following rates: national scope research – maximum of P500,000.00; regional/division/district scope research – maximum of P150,000.00; and school level – maximum of P30,000.00.
But absurdly, although poor reading literacy is clearly the Achilles’ heel of our basic education system what with our placing 76th or 81 countries in reading in the 2022 Program for International Students Assessment, our being 11th worst country in the world in terms of reading poverty and the flurry of haphazard responses such as the “Bawat Bata Bumabasa,” “Catch-up Fridays” and the “National Learning Camp,” there is not yet one policy issued by the DepEd addressing the reading mess emanating from BERF researches.
And that’s not because there is a dearth of BERF researches on the topic. Based on the lists of approved BERF researches posted by some DepEd field offices in their websites, as of 2024, there were at least 75 researches on the issue of poor reading literacy in the secondary. Eleven of this pertain to non-readers. Needless to say, there are more BERF researches on the topic in the elementary level.
These BERF studies being action researches – DepEd defines an action research as “a process of systematic and reflective inquiry to improve educational practices or resolve problems in the classroom or the school” –, the participants are currently enrolled reading laggards. That meant that the 2019 BERF action research “Utilization of Scrabble Games for Reading Proficiency Among G7 Non-reader Students” conducted in the Lawaan National High School in Western Samar involved actual Grade 7 non-readers.
The 2023 BERF action research “Project READ – Read, Enjoy and Develop: A Multimodal Reading Remediation for Grade 10 Non-readers” was also conducted with Grade 10 non-readers enrolled in SY 2022-2023 at the Binan Secondary School of Applied Academics, the locale of the study.
But even with these 75 action researches on non-readers and struggling readers in the secondary – there could be more as not all DepEd field offices publicize their list of approved BERF proposed researches –, the DepEd could not even lay down a policy on whether or not reading laggards should be admitted to high school. The inaction is an implied greenlight to all public secondary schools to continue with the absurd and suicidal practice of accepting non-readers years after the state think tank, Philippine Institute for Development Studies, in a policy note issued in 2019, had called out the mass promotion practice and had urged the DepEd to stop sending non-readers to high school.
The DepEd national leadership cannot claim ignorance of the existence of these action researches on poor reading literacy. DepEd Order No. 43, s. 2015, mandates that the DepEd national and regional offices to “ensure that all research findings and recommendations generated from researches funded by the BERF shall be used as inputs in policy formulation, policy review, policy reformulation and system enhancement.”
Based on the annual accomplishment reports the DepEd is submitting to Congress as part of its compliance to the requirements for the determination of its eligibility for the Performance-Based Bonus (PBB) from 2018 to 2024, it has issued 412 policies crystalized from the researches undertaken during the period. As yet another conclusive proof that the DepEd is running away from the most pressing concern in basic education at the moment, not one of the 412 policies pertains to the reading crisis!**
