The Department of Education (DepEd) on Thursday, Nov. 26, formally announced that the Philippines will be joining the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2022.
During the virtual press briefing on the Updates on Education, DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones said joining in large-scale, international assessments such as the PISA “is not a race to the top” but “knowing where are” to address the remaining gaps in the education system.
PISA is a student assessment of 15-year-old learners across 79 countries done by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The Philippines joined the 2018 PISA but the findings showed “poor performance” of Filipino students in some key learning areas.
DepEd Undersecretary and Chief of Staff Atty. Nepomuceno Malaluan shared how the Philippines is currently preparing for the 2022 PISA.
He noted that the country was supposed to join the PISA next year but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries—not just the Philippines—decided to reconsider their participation.
Despite the “unfavorable findings” of the 2018 PISA, DepEd Undersecretary for Curriculum and Instruction Diosdado San Antonio expressed optimism that “better results” when the country joins the PISA for the second time in 2022.
As part of the 2022 preparations, DepEd Bureau of Education Assessment Education Research Division Senior Education Program Specialist Abigail Alviz said that the “PISA in Action Initiative” was established.
“This is a short-term intervention that aims to act on what we learned from our participation in PISA 2018 to improve learning delivery, assessment, and learning resources,” Alviz said.
“This initiative utilizes the results of the cognitive and background questionnaires, as well as analyses and materials from various education partners,” she added.
To better understand which areas need improvement, PISA National Team Data Manager and statistician Alexander A. Sucalit, Jr. discussed the analysis of the Filipino learners’ difficulty when the country first joined PISA in 2018.
On reading literacy, for instance, Sucalit said that Filipino “learners find it difficult to answer” items that require integrating and generating inferences, as well as public, occupational and personal situation-based items, varied text types, non-continuous text formats, single-source texts, and open-response items.
To address this, Sucalit noted that “students must be provided with reading materials and with contexts that extend beyond the classroom.” Teachers, he added, should also be “trained how to teach” so their students will be able to master these essential skills in return.
Meanwhile, Philippine Normal University University Professor Dr. Marilyn Balagtas and Center for Educational Measurement, Inc. Programs and Development Division Director Kathryn Tan also provided deeper understanding of the of PISA findings.
“The results of PISA give us a lot of food for thought and, definitely, we see the challenges as multi-layered,” Tan said.
“These are some general directions for further study and action that we could explore.”
Also present during the presser were Pasig City Science High School Principal Charlie Fababaer and Regional Science High School for Region VI Principal Maria Santia Arboleda who shared the shared the “best practices” of their schools.
DepEd said that these two schools were among the “top performing public schools” in PISA 2018.
Fabaer noted that the school’s performance in PISA cannot be “associated to a single factor” since there were many practices that contributed to it.
“School performance in PISA depends on various factors and school interventions should be taken holistically,” he added.