By Estanislao Albano Jr.
(This piece was written in April 2024 soon after the EDCOM II group which went to take a close look at the education system of Vietnam came home. A year later, the EDCOM II is still pretending that it does not know that Vietnam makes its children read in Grade 1 and retains those who fail to. Along with that, the EDCOM II also pretends it does not know that up to 2001, the Philippines was also retaining Grade 1 pupils who do not know how to read at the end of the school year and make them repeat the grade until they learn how to read even if that means five school years. And the quality of education of the country then was so much better than it is now. Eight months before its term ends, EDCOM II does not yet realize that it will never fulfill its mandate to make Philippine education globally competitive set forth in RA No. 11899 unless and until all Filipino public schoolchildren start reading in Grade 1 again. What utter fools!)
In his commentary “Lessons on literacy from Vietnam” (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 4/18/24) wherein he discussed the alleged factors behind Vietnam’s strong literacy, Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II) Executive Director Karol Mark Yee wrote: “In addition, Vietnam also implements assessments aimed at ensuring early literacy of Grade 3 and Grade 5 learners.” This is inaccurate.
The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) makes sure that all Grade 1 students learn to read and write competently or they will repeat the grade.
Thai Van Tai, Director of Primary Education Department, MOET, pointed out in the article “Teaching before 1st grade is unscientific” (Vietnam.VN news website, 5/17/23) that in the new Grade 1 program, “schools and primary teachers have more time to help students consolidate to meet the requirements that students need to achieve when completing the 1st grade program, which is reading and writing fluently, helping students have a solid foundation while studying in upper grades.” Tai added that, the duration for some lessons in the Vietnamese language were also reduced with the aim of helping students read and write fluently before going to the higher grades.
It is clear in the news article “More than 52,000 students have not completed grade 1 as ‘normal’” (VnExpress, 7/26/23) that primary students who are assessed as “incomplete” at the end of the school year even in just one subject are retained unless they could hurdle the evaluation after their summer remedial classes.
The MOET’s policy of making the acquisition of reading skills a must for Grade 1 pupils is not new to Filipinos. Under the “No Read, No Move” policy, just like Vietnamese students, Filipino Grade 1 pupils were also given a choice: learn to read or repeat the grade. And the outcome was similar to what is being experienced in Vietnam: for over a century, the Philippines also had no illiterates in Grade 2. For sure, the policy had much to do with the “golden years of the Philippine public school system” Randy David pined for in his column “Education: Mirror of a deeper crisis” (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 2/4/24).
We will know in the coming days if the multiple ironies involving the “No Read, No Move” policy are lost on the EDCOM II or not. First, the policy served the country well for more than a century but when the education arm of the government was reorganized into the Department of Education (DepEd) in 2001, it retired the policy for reasons it has yet to divulge. Second, even after the mass promotion practice which has filled the void created by the DepEd’s decisions to get rid of the “No Read, No Move” policy and to sideline its very own “no promotion for non-readers beyond Grade 3” had brought about the devastating reading and learning crises, there is yet no serious move to terminate the national curse. In fact, the EDCOM II is turning a blind eye on it. Third, acknowledging the country’s weakness in the field of education, the EDCOM II seeks guidance from Vietnam which is making good use of a reading policy the Philippines had discarded.
It is a no brainer that Vietnam’s insistence on making every learner a competent reader in Grade 1 is one of the keys to its world-class education system. Clearly, its reading literacy performance in international student assessments which the EDCOM II gushes over would not have been as strong if as alleged by Yee, it only starts assessing its schoolchildren to ensure “early literacy” when they are already in Grade 3.
It’s also a no brainer that when a country does not require reading skills for passing any grade including Grade 12, the results are the exact opposite of that of Vietnam.
Meaning one of the best lessons, if not the best, that the Philippines could ever learn from Vietnam is to restore its “No Read, No Move” policy and uproot its mass promotion practice. But apparently, that is farthest from the minds of the EDCOM II because more than a month after they benchmarked with the MOET, not one of them has mentioned the stark contrast between the DepEd and the MOET: while the former promotes non-readers all the way to Grade 12, the MOET retains Grade 1 pupils who fail to learn to read fluently.**
