Promotion by quiet pressure

By Herman M. Lagon

It often resurfaces like a classroom leak nobody wants to claim: officials say there is no “mass promotion,” teachers say there is, and learners quietly move up a grade level carrying the same gaps like an old backpack. The denial is often technically correct in the narrowest sense. There is no single memo that bluntly orders, “Pass everyone.” Yet the lived experience in many schools feels like the same outcome, delivered through softer language, performance targets, and paperwork that punishes honesty. Sociologist Randy David described the practice as widespread, often justified under “no child left behind,” even without an explicit mandate, and pointed to grading rules like the transmutation table as part of how the system normalizes progression without mastery.

The clearest “proof” of the implicit kind is not a circular, but a conversation. A school head asks if the child failed, then asks what intervention was done, then demands the Intervention Plan, the Individual Learning Monitoring Plan (ILMP), the teaching materials, the home visitation form, the parent agreement, the contract, the accomplishment report, and the narrative that explains why the learner failed as if failure is a misconduct case. At some point, the lecture quietly shifts: “Just consider the child,” “Our rating will drop,” “our MOOE will be shaved off,” “Your performance will be affected.” The teacher, already drowning in actual teaching plus administrative tasks, understands the real instruction even when nobody says it directly. The safest route is to make the grade look “fixed.” That is why denial stings: it treats a system-level habit like an individual moral lapse, then acts surprised when teachers choose survival.

Grade transmutation sits at the center of this double-speak because it turns weak mastery into a passable-looking report card. DepEd Order No. 8, s. 2015 institutionalized the transmutation table, which converts raw scores into higher quarterly grades. The public debate usually focuses on the most shareable example (a raw 60 mapped to a 75), but the deeper issue is diagnostic: when grades are cosmetically lifted, the school loses an honest signal of who needs help, and parents receive a story that sounds calmer than reality. You can still run remediation, yes, but, with no financial and administrative support, it becomes harder to justify urgency when the card already says “passed.” In a system where appearances feed reports, and reports feed evaluation, the temptation is predictable: make the document agree with the target.

What makes the practice feel “mass” is the mismatch between cheerful promotion numbers and stubborn learning outcomes. The Philippines’ repeated struggles in international assessments are not news to teachers, but they are a sobering mirror for policymakers. OECD’s PISA results have consistently placed our learners near the bottom in reading, mathematics, and science, signaling foundational gaps that do not match the comforting idea that most students are steadily mastering competencies year after year. When nearly everyone moves up but large cohorts still cannot read independently or handle basic numeracy at grade level, the system is not merely being “lenient.” It is pushing the problem upward, then calling it compassion.

To be fair, the urge to promote is not always cynical. It is often a messy form of social triage. Mass promotion is also a symptom of systemic overload: schools are asked to absorb poverty, hunger, unstable homes, and weak social protection, and promotion becomes a technique of inclusion even when mastery is missing. That framing matters because it keeps the critique honest. Many teachers are not inflating grades out of laziness. They are trying to keep children inside school, away from the street, away from shame, away from dropping out. But inclusion achieved by pretending is still a kind of abandonment. It delays the reckoning until the learner is older, more self-conscious, and more exposed.

The most painful part is how the burden is redistributed. The system quietly turns teachers into shock absorbers: they absorb learning gaps, family frustrations, hunger-driven absences, and then the administrative consequences of admitting failure. When a teacher is required to build a thick folder to justify one retained learner, the message is obvious: “Do not make trouble.” In practice, some remediation tasks become mere “passing mechanisms”: a late worksheet, a rushed project, a make-up activity calibrated to raise the average, not to rebuild skill. The learner learns a lesson too, and it is not reading. It is the art of getting by.

This is why the public’s cynicism about “good reports” is not entirely unfair. Many can name the pattern even without policy language: the barangay’s “zero incidents” report that does not match lived fear, the office’s “fast service” tarpaulin that does not match the line, the school’s “100% promotion” brag that does not match the child who still spells out syllables in Grade 7. The incentives reward the clean narrative. The untidy parts of reality often get mistaken for poor performance. A system built around compliance will naturally produce numbers that look clean, even when learning is not.

Still, there are encouraging examples, and Iloilo can claim some of them. Synergeia has cited a local initiative that strengthened school boards, invited community participation, and shared responsibility—reminding us that reform works best when local governance is alive and active. That matters in this debate because implicit mass promotion thrives where accountability is one-way: teachers explain upward, parents complain upward, schools appease upward. When communities share responsibility for both truth-telling and support, the pressure to “make the numbers behave” eases, and the focus can return to actual learning recovery.

A quiet but practical way out begins with restoring the discipline of reflection in decision-making, especially in school leadership: pause before adjusting, examine what the learner can truly do, decide what support is realistic, act without theatrics, then review progress honestly. That sounds like values talk, but it is operational. It changes how meetings sound, how forms are used, and how interventions are judged. It also pairs naturally with media and information literacy, because today’s learners are swimming in edited claims and recycled slogans. UNESCO’s media and information literacy work emphasizes verification and critical evaluation of content, precisely the habits schools need if they want graduates who can tell evidence from performance—online and offline.

DepEd’s denial of “mass promotion” is not always a lie; sometimes it is a narrow definition used as a shield. The issue is not a written order but a working culture. Grades are transmuted, retention is buried in paperwork, and schools are judged by passing rates. So reports look better than real learning. If we want truth in education, we must stop treating failing marks as a problem to hide.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a ”student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.