By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
Six years after the results of the 2018 National Achievement Test (NAT) was internally disseminated, the Department of Education (DepEd) finally made the data publicly available through the 2024 Philippine Statistical Yearbook (PSY) of the Philippine Statistics Authority. Previously, in defiance of DepEd Order No. 55, s. 2016, which provides that NAT data be published for public consumption, the results could not be found in any publicly accessible site including the DepEd website.
Going by the initial publication of the 2014 and 2015 NAT results in the 2015 and 2016 PSYs, respectively, the release of the 2018 NAT data was delayed by five years, the longest ever delay in the public dissemination of results in the entire history of the standardized test.
What makes the unprecedented delay in the release of the 2018 NAT data ironic and highly suspicious are the facts that the test is the first exposure of K to 12 Curriculum products to the NAT and also recorded the lowest ever mean percentage score (MPS) in the Grade 6 NAT. At 37.44 percent, the MPS was 2.5 percentage points or 6.70 percent lower than the 39.95 percent MPS in 2017 which was the previous lowest record and was 11.34 percentage points or 23.24 percent lower than the 48.78 percent average MPS from 2005 to 2017.
For years the DepEd had been touting the K to 12 Curriculum as the best ever curriculum the country ever had and yet in its debut in the Grade 6 NAT, the students averaged less than four correct answers in 10 questions compared to the nearly five correct answers from 2005 to 2017.
It is highly possible that had the country been apprised of the dismal results of the first exposure of K to 12 Curriculum students to the NAT when this became available in May 2019, a groundswell would have forced the DepEd to reform the curriculum right then and there instead of having to wait until 2023 to revise it.
The deafening silence of the DepEd starting when the Grade 6 NAT MPS plunged from the previous year’s 69.10 percent to 41.45 percent or by a staggering 27.65 percentage points or 40.01 percent in 2016 and on the even lower scores in the two succeeding years and the withholding of the 2018 results by five years strongly indicate an attempt on the part of the agency to hide the failure of the K to 12 Curriculum.
It is therefore in order for the DepEd to explain why it embargoed the results of the first NAT under the new curriculum and why it still has to come up with a proper report on the said results after six years.
The DepEd must explain why instead of issuing a truthful statement on the fiasco, its officials peddled the outrageous claim that the slump in NAT performance from 2016 to 2018 was due to the change in the design of the test to align it with the emphasis of the K to 12 Curriculum on 21st Century Skills. Then Assistant Secretary Alma Ruby Torio made the claim to the Senate Committee on Education, Arts and Culture on the March 6, 2019 and Secretary Leonor Briones did the same during the budget hearing of the House on September 3, 2019. The two officials forgot that in 2016, the first batch of K to 12 elementary students were still in Grade 4.
In like manner, in the “Updated Philippine Development Plan 2017-2022” of the National Economic Development Authority and in its own “Basic Education Development Plan 2030,” the DepEd alleged that past scores in the NAT are not comparable with the scores beginning in 2017 and 2018, respectively, due to the alleged change in the design of the NAT. In giving the statements, the DepEd did not only fail to make the year the change was supposedly effected consistent but it also did not consider the fact that the scores in the three years at 41.45, 39.95 and 37.44, respectively, form a trend as against the backdrop of the scores from 2005 to 2015 which averaged 64.78. **
