Unhallowing the DepEd (1)

Universally, education is a hallowed institution. The halls of educational institutions produce future leaders, scientists, doctors, and all kinds of professionals, even heroes that can put a country in the global halls of fame. It is also the institution that holds tremendous potential for changing mindsets, promoting life-preserving values, and sustaining hope for a better and more peaceful world. Educational institutions at all levels have multiplier effects. Educators do not only teach their students; indirectly, they also teach their students’ family members, and ultimately, the communities where the students belong to.

Hence, the kind of teaching or education, the materials used to teach children and older students, and how teachers deliver these materials, among others, are pivotal in achieving education’s avowed noble goals.

Unfortunately, the Philippines has consistently shown poor educational outcomes, as shown in many reports based on research and fact-finding missions. And this was already the reality even before the pandemic struck in early 2020, when all schools were closed.

As early as May 2010, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in its Working Paper Series No. 199 found out that the probability of achieving universal primary education in the Philippines was quite low, based on low net enrolment rates, low cohort survival, and completion rates. The 2009 Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report done by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization identified the Philippines as among the countries with the greatest number of out-of-school children (more than 500,000) at that time. Given corroborating evidence from other sources, the ADB report predicted that both the EFA and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) would not be met by 2015.

Recently, an international agency, ChildHope shared a 2018 study showing that a sample of 15-year-old Filipino students ranked last in reading comprehension out of 79 countries all over the world. They were also ranked 78th in science and mathematics.

Now, as the pandemic still looms as a threat to people’s lives, Filipino schoolchildren continue to miss educational opportunities in another year of school closure, says the United Nations’ Children Fund, corroborating what ChildHope reported in August 2021. The weaknesses in the delivery of quality education services to young children in the past will be exacerbated, as learning is done through various modes that are quite unfamiliar and inaccessible for many impoverished families in both rural and urban contexts in the Philippines.

A report from the Department of Education (DepEd) itself released in March 2021 indicated that over 86 percent of the 1,299 students surveyed by the Movement for Safe, Equitable, Quality and Relevant education said that they learned less from the DepEd’s education modules. This was also true for 66 percent of those using online resources, and 74 percent of those who reported using the blended mode, via online and hard copies of learning materials that students have to read and understand by themselves, or with the help of their parents or older siblings. This was included in a special feature, “The Philippines Still Hasn’t Fully Reopened Its Schools Because of COVID-19. What Is This Doing to Children?” by Chad de Guzman (TIME, 12/1/21).

Aside from the shortfalls just described, the DepEd had been hounded by anomalies in the purchase of textbooks that contain thousands of errors. In 2018, the Commission on Audit (COA) reported that more than P254 million worth of “error-filled” textbooks were purchased for Grade 3 pupils. The errors are both of substance (like errors of fact) and of form (grammatical and syntactic errors) in the books purchased, according to a COA report done in 2018, despite the department’s “three-step review process.” For example, among the errors noted in the textbooks were the following: that the Philippines is an island (it is an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands); and the liquid seen in a thermometer is water, when in fact, it is mercury.

Antonio Calipjo-Go, a retired private schools supervisor, has consistently decried serious errors in the textbooks approved and procured by the DepEd. For the past 26 years, he has waged a crusade against error-riddled textbooks in the Philippines.

(To be continued)

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