Filipino educators worried over ‘dismal’ student performance

Filipino educators worried over ‘dismal’ student performance

A senior office-bearer of a teachers’ advocacy group in the Philippines has decried the “dismal” performance of students in the latest edition of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) that tests 15-year-old students’ knowledge of math, reading and science.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released the PISA results on Dec. 5 in which the Catholic-majority country was ranked 75th among 81 nations.

“This can be attributed to the lack of substantive measures taken to address the fundamental challenges in the education sector in addition to the pandemic-related factors,” said Benjo Basas, who now acts as national chairperson of the Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC), an advocacy group.

The Philippines posted the same ranking before the pandemic in 2018.

Basas, however, said that problems in the education system in the Philippines “existed long before the pandemic.”

Basas attributed the low score to insufficient learning materials, overcrowded classrooms, socio-economic factors, and poor treatment of teachers.

“The failure of the Department of Education and the government to address the fundamental concerns is apparent” in the ranking, noted Basas.

“The government needs to acknowledge that it has failed as it did not recognize the basic problems” and did not care for “the dignity of teachers,” he said.

Teachers in the Philippines, numbering 900,000 out of more than 1.8 million government employees, are among the lowest paid, prompting them to seek green pastures abroad. There are over 1,484 Catholic schools in the country.

Monsignor Ramon Stephen Aguilos, former superintendent of Catholic schools in Palo archdiocese in the central Philippines, said there were “multiple reasons that caused the dismal showing.”

“Needless to say, it reflects the true state of education in the Philippines,” Monsignor Aguilos told UCA News.

He said there are problems with the education department’s leadership, its culture and the budget.

We often hear that teachers with a nod from supervisors are lowering examination standards “to let students pass.” There is rampant cheating in the examinations, the priest added.

Aguilos said that the Philippines should learn from Asian countries like Singapore, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea which occupied the top five slots in the PISA ranking.

 “If these Asian countries can do it, why can’t we? We should also know why Vietnam outpaced the US in these metrics,” the priest said.

Dr. Rey Garnace, a former campus director of the popular state-run Philippine Science High School in the Eastern Visayas region, said that “more reading subjects should be included in the curriculum.”

“Every teacher should be a reading teacher,” suggested Garnace, a former chief administrative officer at Leyte Normal University who now works with the New York City Department of Education in the US. 

“In our country, English is the medium of instruction even at the elementary level. Hence, students cannot understand the concepts. It is time to go back to the mother tongue,” he suggested.

Parents too are worried about the prospects of their children due to the low ranking in the global education survey.

“What will happen to my child when he enters public school soon?” asked Julita who goes by one name and has a five-year-old son.

The PISA survey, the first such study since the pandemic, has revealed an “unprecedented” decline in academic progress in many countries.