By Estanislao C. Albano Jr.
The ruinous effect of the mass promotion practice of the Department of Education (DepEd) on reading literacy is progressive. We had zero non-reader incidence before the DepEd scrapped the “No Read, No Move” policy under which no Grade 1 pupil would be promoted to Grade 2 unless he could read and began accepting non-readers to all the grades ushering in the era of mass promotion in 2001. But by 2005, the national elementary non-reader incidence had hit 1.74 percent rising to 2.56 percent in 2006 (“Philippines: country case study” by Rhona Caoli-Rodriguez). There was no mention of high school non-readers in the report.
However, in 2012, the DepEd issued DepEd Order No. 39, series of 2012 setting the policy guidelines in implementing a reading and writing program in secondary schools implicitly admitting that illiteracy had already spilled over into high school. It is clear that the program covered non-readers because while the order did not mention the word “non-readers,” it allowed the engagement of trained professionals “to provide scientific and systematic interventions” including reading teachers “to teach reading.” Secondary students who could read do not need specialized reading teachers to teach them to read.
In my letter “Why is Edcom II not addressing literacy crisis?” (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 11/9/23), I proved that there are non-readers in high school. As to how large their number is, the news report “70,000 Bicol pupils can’t read – DepEd” in the February 17, 2020 issue of this paper can give us an idea: in SY 2019-2020, the Pagasa National High School in Legazpi City had 37 non-readers out of its more than 600 Grade 7 students for a rate of about 6 percent. That is more than thrice the national non-reader rate in 2005 cited above. Furthermore, this is already in high school.
Recently, University of Philippines professorMaria Mercedes Arzadon claimed that sometimes, mass promotion even results in non-readers making it to college. I also have met two teachers who attested there are senior high school graduates who could not read.
The presence of non-readers in high school and our staggering learning poverty rate prove that a great number of our students will not exert enough effort to learn to read if they know they could be promoted even without the skill. Sadly for the country, however, even after we descended to the level of Zambia and Afghanistan in education quality (per the latest learning poverty report of the World Bank) due to the abolition of the “No Read, No Move” policy, the DepEd is still doubling down on its “no reading cutoff” policy.
However, there are remnants in the DepEd which believe that a return to the practice of retaining students due to failure to learn to read is the solution to the literacy crisis. At least three DepEd regional offices – the National Capital Region (NCR), Cordillera Administrative Region and Region 10 – have responded to the rising illiteracy in their areas with reading cutoff policies.
In the case of the DepEd-NCR, it issued Memorandum No. 067, s. 2014, prohibiting the promotionof Grade 3 pupils who could not read in both Filipino and English a month after this paper exposed that among Grade 6 pupils in Valenzuela City, 11 percent were non-readers and 83 percent frustration level readers (“Valenzuela gov’t allots P300M to save slow and non-readers among students,” 2/9/2014). Alas, however, the issuance is not worth the paper it is printed on. The 29 Grade 7 non-readers of the Sauyo High School in Quezon City featured in the GMA 7 documentary “Pag-asasa Pagbasa” on September 1, 2018 were in Grade 2 when the policy was issued and were the DepEd-NCR serious in enforcing the policy, the students would have been stuck in Grade 3 until they learned how to read.
What happened to the “No Read, No Pass” policy of the NCR proves the claim of Arzadon that there are times when the unwritten mass promotion policy prevails over all other considerations.
It is not helping that even now that we already have illiterate senior high school graduates, the Second Congressional Commission on Education is reportedly still looking for a copy of the DepEd mass promotion policy before it tackles the injurious practice.
(Published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) on November 20, 2023, this piece was viewed 365,000 in the Twitter account of the PDI. It was also liked 19,000 times and shared 5,600 times in the satirical Facebook page “International State College of the Philippines.”)
