What’s wrong with the teachers?

By Modesto P. Sa-onoy

A recent report cited Education Secretary Leonor Briones saying that her department has “identified the curriculum for teachers as one of the gaps in the education system” and that DepEd does not “know how universities and colleges train students to pursue education majors.” In the Philippine set-up, the DepEd is concerned with grade and secondary schools while the Commission on Higher Education covers college and university courses.

It appears there is a disconnect between the two top agencies managing our educational system.

Secretary Briones told the Development Academy of the Philippines’ Dekalogo public lecture series that “We should strengthen the link between the pre-service and the in-service of the teachers. Right now, there is no physical connection between the producer and the end-user. The coordination is quite hazy and not so clear.”

Briones suggested the two agencies engage in more collaborative efforts and dialogues with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority that manages the technical courses, to determine the problems.

This separation of powers and responsibilities results in a miserable performance of the Philippines in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We performed the poorest out of 79 countries in a reading literacy assessment. The PISA examination was given to 600,000 15-year-old students around the world in 2018. Filipino students scored a mean of 340 points in the reading comprehension exam, which falls way below the average 487 points.

Comprehension or literacy is defined by PISA 2018 as “understanding, using, evaluating, reflecting on and engaging with texts in order to achieve one’s goals, to develop one’s knowledge and potential, and to participate in society.”

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said that “Reading proficiency is essential for a wide variety of human activities – from following instructions in a manual; to finding out the who, what, when, where and why of an event; to communicating with others for a specific purpose or transaction.”

How could we have fared so poorly? Secretary Briones points to the training of the teachers that in effect clears her own backyard.

The problem had already been identified in 2016 at the time when she came into the department. She inherited the problem. But we ask, what did she do to address the problems identified by the 2016 study?

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank reported on the state of Basic Education in the Philippines, focusing on the flow of funds from DepEd and how these are spent in the schools. In summary, it said there was a “lack of transparency as well as efficiency which greatly reduced the benefits of greater funding. However, even with an efficiently run bureaucracy, factors that negatively affect learning outcomes are very much present.” Three factors were listed.

On teacher quality, the report said “With the exception of English at the elementary level, the average elementary or high school teacher could answer fewer than half of the questions on the subject content tests correctly. Since these tests are closely aligned with the curriculum, the results suggest that teachers face significant challenges in teaching a considerable portion of the current curriculum.”

If half of our teachers in both elementary and high school levels could not answer the test something is gravely ill. One cannot teach what one does not know.

The second factor is inequity in the allocation of resources. The report said, “Resources are not channeled to where these are most needed. Schools serving poorer students tended to be more resource-constrained than wealthier schools… …For example, poorer students tended to go to high schools that had teachers with more limited knowledge of their subject areas. They also tended to go to schools with lower levels of discretionary funding and those that reported having implemented only a minimal amount of school-based management.”

We know that schools, where most of the students are poor, are less provided than the rich ones; and poor students tended to study in schools with poor teachers. Indeed, the poor get less education than the rich schools that could afford to hire better teachers.

Aside from these factors, the report suggested the need for limitation of enrolment since smaller schools tended to perform better.

The problem goes beyond the curriculum. Adding two more years in high school does not address the problem, the K-12 only exacerbates the problem by stretching the limited resources, the report concluded.