DepEd urged to step up probe on sagot-for-sale

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Education (DepEd) and the Commission on Higher Education as well as academic institutions should step up probing and curbing various forms of distance cheating as the “sagot-for-sale” (answer-for-sale) scheme remains prevalent despite being discouraged by the DepEd and flagged in Senate panel hearings, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian said.

He cautioned that the quality of education will be affected if students will continue to depend on this.

“If we do not end this answer-for-sale and other forms of distance learning fraud, the more the students will not learn. And when they get through it for the first time, they will repeat this deception over and over again. The quality of education depends on it. Our goal in continuing education is to ensure that our youth are not just learning. We also train them to be honest, efficient and trustworthy,” Gatchalian stressed.

Under the scheme, he pointed out, parents hire others to answer their children’s modules for them. Reports had it that some students and parents themselves offer to work on school requirements for P150 up to P500.

He said school requirements include modules, research papers, essays and even video editing. Students who offer these services receive payment through online banking or virtual wallets.

“Their customers can come from those in junior high school, senior high school and all the way to college. Those who offer these services on social media use the hashtags #AcademicCommission, #AcademicWriting and #AcademicService, among others,” Gatchalian said in a statement.

He noted that students who accept commissioned academic works say they use what they earn for expenses related to home-based learning. On the other hand, parents who engage in these practices use what they earn to make ends meet.

Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate committee on basic education, arts and culture, said allowing these practices to prevail will produce students who are not only lacking in competencies but also in integrity.

Aside from probing these incidents, he also sees the importance of capacitating teachers to detect cheating in academic output as he emphasized the importance of investing in assessment technologies to uphold academic integrity in digital education.