Senator Win Gatchalian has called on the Department o f Education to probe reports of what he calls the “sagot for sale” scheme, where parents hire someone else to answer their children’s self-learning modules.
He also warned parents engaging in this practice that their children would suffer since their learning and development will be compromised.
But Senator Nancy Binay said she was confident the department could handle the issue once it conducts its own inquiry.
She said they were not sure if this was systemic or highly organized in the school or district level.
“Our teachers value honesty and integrity and they will never allow such kind of cheating to happen,” she said.
Binay said perhaps it might only merit a Senate probe if the reports the department gathered confirmed that it had reached a wholesale scale and to an institutional level.
“But let’s wait first for their investigation, and perhaps we can ask them for the outcome of their inquiry and their recommended action,” she said.
In the latest public hearing, which tackled updates on Academic Year 2020-2021, Gatchalian referred to an earlier report by the Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC) that pointed to how struggling parents were hiring someone else-some of whom they found online—to answer their children’s modules.
He also said the Basic Education Committee would have another hearing on the methodology of assessing learners’ performance.
According to the Department of Education, 99.13 percent of the more than 14 million public school learners passed the first quarter.
This excludes data from the National Capital Region, Region 7, and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
The scenario in Valenzuela is different, however, and more consistent with the low national achievement scores, Gatchalian says.
Among Grade 8 learners, the average is about 48 percent across different subjects. In Grade 9, the average across different subjects is 51 percent, and 55 percent among Grade 10 learners, way below the passing rate of 75 percent.
While Gatchalian acknowledges that the department’s report is only based on what the regions submitted, he reiterated that there is a need for a better understanding of how learners are evaluated under the distance learning setup, which has been hounded by challenges such as the lack of interaction with teachers and reliable internet connectivity.
“I know this is challenging, but again we need to fully understand the assessment conducted by the DepEd,” said Gatchalian.
“And we also want to see a per-subject analysis because we all know that we need to help our students by looking at their weaknesses in different subject matters.”