During his recent visit to Dumaguete, President Marcos Jr. announced that he would reveal his pick for the new secretary of the Department of Education soon, following the resignation of Vice President Sara Duterte from the position. The President had requested “several names” as potential candidates for the DepEd position, which teacher’ groups and education experts say should come from the education sector.
The Teachers’ Dignity Coalition has said the Department of Education must be led by a non-politician, or by an individual who is not actively involved in partisan politics so that the Department can be “spared from political bickering” and “divisive political fighting.”
According to a policy note titled The learning crisis in Philippine education: An overview by Maria Cynthia Rose Bautista and Mark Vincent Aranas, and published by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies, Filipino learners need to be equipped with 21st-century competencies such as critical thinking and problem-solving to be able to thrive in today’s fast-changing world.
They also underscored the importance for academic institutions to provide spaces for learners to acquire character-building qualities such as leadership, initiative, adaptability, and grit.
The Philippines, however, has been “slow in making this shift, contributing to today’s learning crisis.”
They said that “equally urgent” is the need to tackle head-on financial, organizational, technical, human resource, and poverty- and inequality-related constraints to learning at different levels of the education system.
In reality, because of meager investment in the educational sector over the past decade, many schools do not even have toilets or clean water. They use outdated teaching methods, and seem to give limited attention to the development of the children’s social and emotional skills. It’s no wonder that Filipino children lag behind.
The World Bank noted that the Philippines has been experiencing an education crisis even before the pandemic hit our shores. According to its research, only 10 percent of our Grade 5 students are capable of meeting global academic standards due to their lack of proficiency in the instructions’ primary language, typically English; while the majority of Filipinos aged 15 lack knowledge of simple math skills.
For instance, each student must master 12 competencies within the first quarter of English in Grade 3, according to the published Most Essential Learning Competencies, there are still issues with its implementation.
Can you imagine the skills overload that our students deal with each school year? If this avalanche of competencies placed on our teachers’ and students’ shoulders continues, the result will be learning that is both superficial, and of low quality.
The urgent need is for the Marcos administration to evaluate the MELCs, and simplify the Department’s reorganization.
It is high time to listen to teachers when they say, “Back to basics!”.
I wonder now why the previous products (those born in the 60s or earlier) of the old public education curricula were able to read, write, and compute better than the Grade 5 pupils can now?
Remember, our curriculum then focused on the Three Rs: Reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmetic, with an appropriate number of lessons needed to master.
That time, it was enough for the required level of thinking and the mental capability of the learners. (At least, look at us now.)
We should give this more serious attention. Remember, the education sector is tasked to mold the future citizens and leaders of the nation.
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Author’s email: whelmayap@yahoo.com
