Several concerns have been raised regarding Catch-Up Fridays, the latest learning recovery effort of the Department of Education (DepEd).
“Based on EDCOM consultations, Catch-Up Fridays do not appear to be structured to optimize learning recovery,” said EDCOM 2 Executive Director Dr. Karol Mark Yee.
EDCOM 2 is the Congressional body created through Republic Act (RA) 11899 tasked to undertake a comprehensive national assessment and evaluation of the performance of the Philippine education sector.
In a meeting last month, EDCOM 2 probed the DepEd’s learning recovery program, Catch-Up Fridays.
READ:
https://mb.com.ph/2024/1/13/what-is-catch-up-fridays
In January, DepEd released Memorandum No. 01 series of 2024 instructing public schools nationwide to devote Fridays to activities for improving reading skills and comprehension.
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“It seems that teachers have not been provided in-depth training on how to conduct effective reading intervention…while reading classes focus on ‘reading’ more texts, they do not necessarily help the students improve their reading skills,” Yee said during the meeting.
Citing data from the Comprehensive Rapid Literacy Assessment (CRLA) from Regions IV-B, V, VI, VIII and the National Capital Region (NCR), EDCOM 2 noted that more than 60 percent of Grade 1 and 2 students are “not yet reading at the right level” with four percent “needing full intervention” and 24 percent “requiring moderate intervention.”
EDCOM 2 also raised the difficulty of implementing targeted - or “differentiated” - instruction in the Catch-up Fridays sessions it has observed.
“Do you give your teachers the space to do differentiated instruction in the classroom as part of learning recovery?” EDCOM 2 Commissioner Kiko Benitez asked DepEd.
As a response, DepEd Undersecretary Gina Gonong said that the team of the National Reading Program has already trained teachers nationwide on the implementation of the National Reading Program on how “we handle these learners on different levels.”
READ:
https://mb.com.ph/2024/1/12/happy-and-engaged-students-teachers-welcome-catch-up-fridays-dep-ed
However, Yee noted that EDCOM consultations show otherwise.
“We know - we’ve visited many schools - that [differentiated instruction] is not happening…If you look at the policy, it’s not explicit to do differentiated instruction. It is not explicit that you group learners by ability,” Yee said.
“The question is: how will we make it so, because until we change the practices, until we institute programs that could possibly move the needle, the reality is we will have homogeneous programs for heterogeneous learners and it’s not going to solve the issue,” he added.
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