The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
By Rose de la Cruz
Sen. Win Gatchalian, chair of the Senate committee on basic education, wants teacher education institutions (TEIs) to be accountable for their failure to produce teachers properly, which manifested in the dismal performance of the Philippines in the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The Philippines joined the 2022 PISA survey which covered reading, math and science plus an evaluation of students’ creative thinking and financial literacy skills. The survey focused mainly on mathematics.
PISA 2022 was the eighth assessment since its launch in 2000. Every PISA test assesses students’ knowledge and skills in mathematics, science, and reading, and focuses on one of these subjects and provides a summary assessment of the other two. In 2022, the focus was on math.
Since only one public school in Metro Manila scored more than the minimum proficiency level in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022, senators have expressed dismay and want to close down or penalize those that have been remiss in properly training teachers, which in turn produced leaders lacking proficiency in math, science and comprehension.
The call to close low-performing teacher education institutions (TEIs) surfaced at the hearing of the Senate committee on basic education following the dismal outcome of TEIs, particularly those that supply teachers in public schools, which essentially resulted in the poor performance of learners in much-needed skills for these basic subjects. The results of PISA study for 2022 were recently released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The result showed that only one public school in Metro Manila scored above the minimum proficiency level in the PISA survey, as reported by Department of Education-National Capital Region Director Jocelyn Andaya. This was the Benigno S. Aquino High School in Makati City.
Aside from Benigno S. Aquino High School, five more schools passed the assessment but they were all private schools, a story of GMA 7 News quoted Andaya saying.
“In NCR, there was just one from the public [schools] of the 21 [that participated in PISA]… It’s Benigno Aquino [High School],” she said.
At the hearing, Committee chair Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian said he was not after shutting down the TEIs that did not perform well but that they need to extract accountability in teacher education. He also said he sees no point in TEIs’ continuing this lackadaisical attitude of “business as usual and then collecting subsidy through higher education, with the students paying extra expenses” as teachers are the most important resource in students’ education. He wants total accountability as he noted that the Commission on Higher Education had flagged the same concern three to four years ago.
Sen. Nancy Binay suggested that a policy be made regarding TEIs with zero passing rate, similar to schools offering nursing programs, which Gatchalian echoed and insisted on “accountability in teacher education because it starts with pre-service. But if we are seeing TEIs that are not up to par, non-compliant with minimum standards, something must be done or else this is a waste of resources.”
The senators were informed by Karol Mark Yee, executive director of EdCom II, that over 70 TEIs offering a Bachelor of Elementary Education and 0ver 120 offering Bachelor of Second Education , had “zero passing rate but are still in operation” in the past 10 years, Business Mirror reported.
This enraged Gatchalian who blurted: “This is not only a waste of resources but they also end up in our system. He called this a “double whammy” to which CHED replied that it is willing to help DepEd correct this.
CHED chair Prospero de Vera said they would extend to DepEd colleges and universities whose teacher programs are centers of excellence or development to study the problem and provide solutions to DepEd.
Senator Binay suggested that actual applications of lessons be taught, instead of memorizations. “The big question is how do we teacher our new teachers?Maybe it is time to revisit and change the curriculum on how we teach our teachers as well,” she said.
In the 2022 PISA survey, the Philippines ranked sixth lowest among the 81 countries and economies that participated in the study. Filipino learners lagged in math and reading comprehension.
In the Philippines, a total of 7,193 students in 188 schools undertook the assessment in mathematics, reading or science, representing about 1,782,900 individual 15-year-old students, or an estimated 83% of the total population of 15-year-olds, according to the 2022 PISA report.
The PISA is a global reading comprehension study conducted by the inter-government group OECD on 600,000 students aged 15 years old around the world. The Philippines joined the study in 2018.