Local, international tests show urgent need to improve quality of education

In 2020, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) announced that 91.6 percent of Filipinos are functionally literate. This is based on the results of the 2019 Functional Literacy, Education, and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS). The PSA defines “functional literacy” as “a significantly higher level of literacy which includes not only reading and writing skills, but also numeracy skills.” In addition, these skills must be good enough to allow a person to effectively participate in activities that require reading and writing throughout normal life.

But the results of important international examinations contradict this statistic, and paint a very different picture of education in the Philippines. In the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), the Philippines scored significantly below average compared to other countries in all three major areas: reading literacy, mathematics literacy, and science literacy. Only about 19 percent of Filipino students achieved at least the minimum proficiency level in overall reading literacy, and only about 20 percent achieved the minimum in mathematical literacy. Pisa concluded that there is an urgent need to improve the quality of basic education in the Philippines. It also questioned the usage of English in the school system, since Filipinos have demonstrably performed better in the Philippines’ National Achievement Test (NAT) when using Tagalog rather than English. Why would a country knowingly try to educate its students in a nonindigenous language?

Pisa is not the only international test that shows the serious deficiencies of education quality in the country, however. In 2019, the Philippines along with five other Southeast Asian countries participated in the Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics (SEA-PLM) assessment. This exam is administered to fifth graders. The Philippines used English for this test, the only country of the six to do so, the other five being Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos. In this test, 25 percent of Filipino students belonged to the lowest level of proficiency in reading literacy. Overall, only 63 percent of Filipino students met the lowest expected level of proficiency for their grade level. In writing, only 6 percent of Filipinos met the expected writing proficiency of their grade level, while nearly half of Filipinos belonged to the lowest proficiency level. In math, only 42 percent of Filipinos reached the minimum proficiency level.

In comparison, Vietnam scored the highest in the region, often having over 80 to 90 percent of scores in these areas (they also scored high on Pisa). The SEA-PLM concluded that the Philippines should reconsider the usage of English in its education system, and implement curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment reforms. Overall, other than the expected divergences in socioeconomic status, a main takeaway is that, as in the Pisa results, these indicate a poor quality of education. These examinations by respectable organizations show that only about 20 percent of Filipinos are functionally literate, yet somehow the PSA comes up with a 91.6 percent figure. Either the PSA’s definition of literacy is starkly different from the rest of the world, or there is something suspicious going on with Philippine-administered national examinations.

As it turns out, something is wrong with the Philippine-administered examinations. There have been multiple reports of rampant cheating, including feeding students answers, and coaching during the exams. The curriculum also has a poor history component, often starting with the arrival of the Spanish colonizers, and ignoring or only slightly touching on thousands of years of precolonial history. Additionally, even when discussing the colonial period, the focus is merely on the 1896 Revolution, with very little context given, and hardly any discussion on the many documented resistance against Spain over the centuries. Many Filipinos also think they are of mixed race with the Spaniards because of their Hispanized surnames, despite actual historical records proving this idea wrong. It goes without saying that the history of areas such as Sulu and the Cordilleras are also entirely ignored, with the Department of Education instead preferring to paint these groups of Filipinos in an essentialist and prejudiced light.

Even with contemporary history, there are serious deficiencies, particularly in how the martial law period and post-Edsa years have been handled by teachers. How can Filipinos make informed choices about the future without an adequate understanding of the past? This situation makes it harder to create a culture that sees the importance of education in development and politics, which makes it harder to get funding for education. If people do not understand how to parse rhetoric and think critically, how can they possibly participate in democracy or civil society effectively? How can Filipinos make their voices matter in charting the country’s direction?

STERLING V. HERRERA SHAW
Graduate Student
University of the Philippines Diliman