DepEd gets into heart of systems breakdown
(First of three parts)
MANILA, Philippines -- The official figures remain grim as some 20 million students troop back to classrooms on Monday at the opening of the new school year.
Out of 10 students entering Grade 1, six will complete the elementary course, four will get through high school and two will enter college, according to the Department of Education (DepEd).
“We do not know if the two who will enter college will get a degree or even a job,” says Alice Alafriz Pañares, deputy director of the DepEd’s National Educators Academy of the Philippines.
Problems bedeviling the Philippine education system had been festering for the past three decades before officials agreed they had reached a critical stage. The analogy is made of a frog placed in a kettle of water that is put to a boil. The frog will not know it is dying until it is too late.
Experts both in and out of government say there are no quick fixes to the nation’s education woes. A band-aid approach, which is essentially what’s in place, will not do.
“The situation remains dismal,” says former Education Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad. He says the tragedy is manifested in the very fundamental problems of access, a high dropout rate and a very low reading proficiency.
“Half of the country’s student population is not even in school,” he says.
Abad recalls a national test on reading given to about a million Grade 6 students in 2003. He says it showed that 99.4 percent of those who took the test were unprepared to enter high school.
An analysis of the data showed that the level of proficiency of the Grade 6 students was only at Grade 4. When examined further, it was discovered that these students could not follow instructions and could not understand the questions well.
For years, says Abad, teachers who did not wish to be accused of incompetence gave “wholesale” passing marks.
In 2002, the late Education Secretary Raul Roco implemented a new basic curriculum. A product of years of study, it whittled down 10 subjects taught in the public schools to five -- English, Science, Mathematics, Social Studies and Filipino.
Art, Music, History, Physical Education and Culture were crammed under Social Studies.
Goal is functional literacy
“The idea is to develop functional literacy,” says former Education Undersecretary Fe Hidalgo, who took charge of the department for over a year after Abad quit in the midst of calls for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s resignation over charges she stole the 2004 election.
“Every child should be a reader, functionally literate, be able to understand and apply in daily life the result of reading and numeracy,” Hidalgo says.
Another issue that has come up of late was a legislative proposal -- known as the Gullas bill -- to use English as the medium of instruction, reversing the current bilingual policy (English and Filipino) in a bid to raise language proficiency.
Some schools have been experimenting with using the lingua franca of the region -- there are 171 dialects across the country -- in Grades 1 and 2 to increase the level of comprehension before going into the bilingual policy in Grade 3.
It is a costly exercise as it means translating all the dialects into English and Filipino. To go straightaway to English can be doubly taxing both to teachers who do not have the competency to teach it in the first place and the students who have no clue. Some experts say this should be done progressively, starting in Grade 3.
Dangerous legislation
“The problem is not poor English,” says Juan Miguel Luz, president of the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction and a former education undersecretary who calls the Gullas measure a “dangerous legislation.”
“It is poor English, Science and Math skills. Weak English proficiency is not the sole determinant of poor overall achievement, it is merely a factor,” he says, pointing out the Chinese or the Japanese will never throw out Mandarin or Nippongo in favor of the King’s English.
Asked if she was satisfied with the Roco initiative to rouse the education system from its death throes, Hidalgo replies, “Of course not,” citing a whole range of problems.
Among others, she cites education’s allocation in the annual budget. Although it now comprises 13 percent of the pie -- the biggest share -- it still lags behind the budget allocation to education of neighboring countries, which is upward of 20 percent.
There are sectors critical of the new curriculum and want some changes.
Music is gone
Concert pianist Reynaldo Reyes, 73, grieves that music has been effectively scrapped from the school curriculum. He is critical of how music had been taught, which essentially was about organizing rondallas. But, he says, “at least, it was there.”
The little time allowed for Physical Education has deprived the nation of a pool of athletes to choose from in fielding representatives to the Asian Games and the Olympics.
For a nation that has been left behind by its neighbors in manufacturing and agriculture, its services sector should be strengthened, experts say. But when call centers can only accept 10 applicants out of 100, there is something terribly wrong somewhere.
Without access to material wealth, the only way to social mobility is a good education and when even that is not available, the poor have no way out of the rut, says Arsenio Balisacan, director of the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture based in Bangkok.
Pump-priming
The Arroyo administration in recent years has made huge investments in building and repairing schools to achieve its goal of providing free universal access to elementary and high school education.
It has been updating textbooks and teaching manuals, mobilizing resources from businessmen and private companies in exchange for tax incentives and tapping funds from international agencies.
In May 2006, Ms Arroyo authorized a “pump-priming program” to train and help teachers gain expertise in Mathematics and Science. Some 17,000 teachers entered the program initially last year, attending courses in summer or enrolling for regular semestral work.
Economics professor Edita A. Tan says the Roco curriculum is on the right track in reallocating of more time to them.
“The big question is how do we improve the teaching and learning of the core subjects,” she says.
“There are teacher training activities but they are of limited reach. Remember that there are about 500,000 school teachers and only a few thousands go for summer training program,” says Tan.
A summer will not do
“A summer of training will not produce English, Math, Science expertise. It takes time to achieve expertise in a field. Most of our Math and Science teachers have not majored in their teaching fields. They have to major in these fields to achieve competence to teach them,” she says.
Tan says another problem is that very few universities and colleges produce quality teachers.
Just the cost of training people who will train the teachers is staggering, say DepEd officials.
Education Secretary Jesli Lapus has devoted most of his time -- since he was appointed to the helm of DepEd in August -- planning to fast-track projects to improve learning facilities and teacher training.
“You have to think out of the box,” says Lapus, a three-term congressman and former banker.
Learning via satellite
Lapus is in the midst of negotiations with China to provide initially half of the 50,000 schools nationwide 10 television sets each to receive learning materials to be transmitted via satellite.
Another of his priority projects is to design a program for legislation that will address the skills and jobs mismatch in the employment market. It’s the paradox of a surplus of graduates that cannot fill half a million waiting jobs.
Lapus repeatedly talks of encouraging high school graduates who cannot immediately afford a college education to go to technical and vocational schools and at least be assured there will be a job waiting for them at any point in their studies.
It is a program that has been successfully implemented in the United States and Europe for high school graduates who cannot pass college entrance examinations.
There’s still a long way to go, but there are determined moves to reach the goal of improving education one tortured step at a time.
“We’re getting into the heart of the systems breakdown,” says Lapus.
