In Baguio City earlier this week, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was said to have expressed alarm over the deterioration in English proficiency of public school teachers. “We have to make sure their English is good,” the President said as she ordered the release of P500 million for teachers’ English training. “Really, English is not proceeding anywhere as fast as Math or Science... It is deteriorating. Something must be wrong with the educational system.”
She was right, of course, but barely. English proficiency among teachers is deteriorating, but so is Science education and Mathematics too. And it is not just something, but a lot of things that are wrong with our educational system.
The results of the National Achievement Test given in 2004 say it all. In that test, covering English, Math and Science, only 2.1 percent of all high school seniors scored 75 percent or higher. In the Math test, 12.9 percent passed with a grade of at least 75 percent. In English, only 6.8 percent made the grade. And in Science, less than 1 percent (0.7 percent) got a grade of 75 percent or better.
The performance of high school freshmen was even worse. In the 2004 High School Readiness Test, covering the same three subjects, less than 1 percent (0.52 percent) scored 75 percent or better in all three subjects. If the passing mark was lowered to 50 percent, only 7.4 percent of the students would have passed the test.
And how do Filipinos students compare with others? The Trends in International Math and Science Survey (TIMSS) conducted in 1998 ranked the Philippines fourth from last among 39 countries that participated in the survey. Five years later, in 2003, the Philippines was No. 41 among the 45 countries that took part in the TIMSS.
Educators have cited a host of reasons for the dismal state of Philippine education, including the lack of teachers and classrooms as well as the error-filled textbooks and instructional materials. But way up there among the major reasons should be the poor preparation and training of teachers. In a recent assessment test conducted by the Department of Education, only 60 percent of public elementary school teachers passed the English proficiency test. Among secondary school teachers, only one out of every five who took the test had a grade of 70 percent or better.
The problem couldn’t get any worse than the situation in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. According to a study done by USAID, the English proficiency of many teachers in the ARMM is only as good as the average Grade 2 or 3 pupil in public elementary schools nationwide -- meaning they can barely understand, much less speak, the language, given the very poor scores earned even by high school students in the National Achievement Test. The study said the ARMM has “the lowest student academic achievement owing largely to the poor competencies of teachers.”
Education Secretary Jesli Lapus is fully aware of the problem, and has no intention of hiding it. Noting that those who took the nationwide English proficiency test were full-fledged teachers, he wondered: “How many thousands of students are affected by this?”
The answer is quite obvious from the results of various achievement or aptitude tests. The lack of English proficiency among teachers particularly is critical in the light of the government policy mandating the use of English as the medium of instruction in three subjects -- English, Math and Science -- starting in Grade 3 and in all subjects in the secondary school level. If teachers don’t even know the language in which they are supposed to communicate with their students, what can they teach?
Lapus has acknowledged that Philippine education is faced with “a myriad of problems.” But there is no dearth of sensible proposals to solve them either. Another education summit, like what the President wants held later this month, and another master plan, such as she ordered to be put together, won’t improve the competence of our teachers or the quality of education. What is needed is the will and resolve on the part of the administration to commit the resources needed to fix these problems.
