"There is plenty of blame to go around."
Every time the country participates in a study, we always end up second to the last or dead last. This is what happened to the recent World Bank study which said that 80 percent of our school children do not know what they are supposed to know. We were last in reading and second to the last in math and science.
It is a damming result and DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones is understandably furious. She is now demanding that the WB apologize for releasing the results without following so-called protocols. She also accused the WB of shaming and insulting the country.
I do not understand this delayed reaction of anger at all. A few days ago, senior officials from the DepEd said that they are taking the results of the study as a challenge. Now, their boss has come out swinging—which is an extreme reaction. She seems to imply that the WB has some kind of sinister motive in releasing the study results to the media. What would Secretary Briones have wanted the WB to do? Not release the study results at all? Give the DepEd the advance information so that it can prepare a response? All these will not change the results of the study.
As to the study being outdated, having been done in 2019 and a lot of things have happened since then, Secretary Briones should have mentioned what these things are. A 2019 study is not outdated at all. Studies, after all, take some time to administer, evaluate and then get the results published.
Besides, that is not the first study where we performed badly. Almost a year ago, another study was published with similar results. If at all, this WB study is just confirming the results of that older study. Maybe what the good Secretary should do is enumerate all the good things that the DepEd has done since 2019 that radically improved the quality of education in this country. In fact, everything we have read and heard about education in the past 18 months were all pandemic-related.
One item about education that came out a few weeks ago was all about the errors found in textbooks being used in the public schools. The report went on to say that the textbooks were substandard and need extensive corrections.
Like everything else, the pandemic basically dictated what has to be done in the field of education. If that reading test conducted where we were dead last was done in English, it should be easy to understand why. I have been informed that textbooks being used in public schools are printed in the dialect depending on the region. If our textbooks were in English, we can reasonably assume that our students would have fared a lot better. We can of course, debate to our hearts content the pros and cons of printing textbooks in the dialect and not in English but the test results should determine the narrative.
Another validation of the WB study is that of the thousands of applicants for call center employment, only between 10 to 15 per cent can pass the English proficiency requirement outright. The DepEd should therefore not be so defensive in reacting to the WB study as if it is a death sentence. There is after all plenty of blame to go around.
And who should get the blame? The government bureaucrats who run the DepEd or the politicians who appoint them? Maybe we should blame the teachers. Perhaps it’s the fault of the schools who graduate teachers who can hardly speak proper English. Maybe it is all of the above. The sad thing about teachers is that it is not because we do not have good and qualified teachers. They simply decided to pack their bags to seek greener pastures overseas and perhaps find fulfillment there. We know that education is not one of the pet programs of this administration but it cannot simply leave everything to the government bureaucrats of the DepEd without providing some guidance.
At the moment, many are saying that Philippine education is rudderless. Whether this is true or not, the administration needs to provide the strategic directions. Another reason why this should concern all Filipinos is because it involves the very future of the country. We need to train our youth as best as we can because they will be the next leaders of the land. That should be enough motivation. The administration can in fact do a lot more if it wants to, like replacing some senior officials in the DepEd to inject fresh blood and new dynamism.
We can sacrifice a road or a bridge project. But never the quality of our education. That must be our national attitude.