FINDING ANSWERS
Former Senator
Atty. Joey Lina
All children should be able to read by age 10. Reading is a gateway for learning as the child progresses through school – and conversely, an inability to read slams that gate shut. Beyond this, when children cannot read, it’s usually a clear indication that school systems aren’t well organized to help children learn in other areas such as math, science, and the humanities either.
The statement above certainly rings true. It was written by World Bank Global Director for Education Jaime Saavedra in 2019, as he introduced the concept of Learning Poverty which simply means “being unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10.”
And he stressed that eliminating learning poverty “is as important as eliminating extreme monetary poverty, stunting, or hunger.”
A joint report by UNICEF in partnership with UNESCO and the World Bank (WB) revealed that learning poverty has increased tremendously when in-person schooling was stopped due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the Philippines, learning poverty reached a new high of 90 percent on August 2021, according to a WB report released last November.
The rise in learning poverty, the WB said, is because “children’s engagement with remote learning is generally low where parents or caregivers lack any type of education and, in several countries, these children were three-to-four times less likely to engage in a learning activity compared to households where parents have tertiary education, as seen in the Philippines and Peru.”
Prior to the pandemic, the rate of learning poverty in the Philippines in 2019 “was already a high of 69.5 percent.” And a year before, the results of the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) revealed that the Philippines ranked lowest in reading literacy among 79 countries, and second to lowest in mathematics and science.
The PISA results showed that 15-year-old Filipino students got a mean score of 340 points in overall reading literacy, much lower than the global average of 487 points. The score in mathematics was 353 points and it was 357 points in science.
“In a world that rewards individuals increasingly not just for what they know, but for what they can do with what they know, PISA goes beyond assessing whether students can reproduce what they have learned in school,” PISA explained as it cited the value of critical thinking: “To do well in PISA, students have to be able to extrapolate from what they know, think across the boundaries of subject-matter disciplines, apply their knowledge creatively in novel situations and demonstrate effective learning strategies.”
But even before the PISA revelation, there were other studies pointing to the supposedly poor quality of education in the country. In 2014, a study of the Philippine Business for Education (PBED) revealed that a general aptitude test administered among college freshmen who were mostly graduates of public schools “found that only three percent were ready for college.”
“Most were entering college with only Grade IV to V reading and math competencies. Overall mean percentage score of fourth year high school students in DepEd’s 2011-2012 National Achievement Tests was 48.9, when the goal was a score of 75. The scores were 46.37 and 40.53 for mathematics and science, respectively. These are all evidence of a weak basic education system,” PBED said.
With all the unflattering reports on Philippine education, incoming Education Secretary Sara Duterte-Carpio has her work cut out for her. She certainly needs all the support she can get from stakeholders especially local government units and local school boards (LSBs) which really need to function in its crucial role in these critical times.
As provided by the Local Government Code of 1991, provinces, cities, and municipalities have their own respective LSBs comprised of the local chief executive and appropriate superintendent or supervisor of schools as co-chairmen, with members consisting of the local sanggunian’s education committee chairman, the local treasurer, representative of Sangguniang Kabataan, representative of the teachers’ organization, and representative of the non-academic personnel of public schools.
As to its functions, the LSBs “serve as advisory committee to the sanggunian concerned on educational matters such as, but not limited to, the necessity for and the uses of local appropriations for educational purposes.” When I was Laguna governor, the LSB met almost monthly, and not just once every quarter, to review the programs, projects and activities aimed at improving overall the quality of education provided to pupils in Laguna elementary and high schools.
We even introduced – and we were the first province to do so – the dual-tech training program in high school, a pre-cursor to the current tracks being observed in senior high school. This was in late l990's in Binan Laguna. The provincial government funded the hiring of teachers and provided the needed school buildings and other material support to schools.
Localizing education governance is key. Making LSBs and LGUs more effective in a strong partnership with DepEd can help a lot in the collective efforts to diminish the so-called learning poverty in our country.
Email: finding.lina@yahoo.com