Education crisis needs urgent action, not apology

Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures, and being in the midst of a pandemic gives this more meaning. In the case of our education system currently in crisis, this means finding solutions, not asking for an apology.

For decades, the Philippines has seen the quality of its education deteriorating to undesirable, even embarrassing, levels where elementary students stutter when doing simple addition or subtraction challenges, or reading complex English words.

A recent World Bank study, currently recanted after a “premature” publication, had supported this observation. It stated that a quarter of Grade 5 students in the Philippines have the reading and math skills of a second or third grader. Worse, four in five 15-year-old students lack the understanding of basic math concepts such as fractions and decimals.

Education Secretary Leonor Briones may have scored one over the World Bank for the latter’s lapse in prematurely publishing the report, and depriving the Department of Education (DepEd) a chance to provide context, as well as inputs on recent initiatives to address the problem.

A demand for a public apology from an 80-year-old civil servant, whose track record in both the private and public sectors, have been unsullied by scandals would certainly be cause for even the mighty World Bank to backtrack on the report’s untimely publication, but I doubt if it would significantly change any of the more important facts.

Change is too slow

If change is, indeed, up coming at the DepEd, it has been manifesting too slowly given that Briones has been in charge since 2016, being one of the few Cabinet members who belong to the original cast when President Duterte took his oath as president.

At the start of her term, Briones spelled out the four core areas where reforms will focus: a review and updating of the curriculum, the continuous improvement of the learning environment for students, multi-stakeholder support and cooperation, and the up-skilling and reskilling of teachers to keep pace with developments.

Such broad strokes, indeed, provide a good building stone for change – if these are supported through solid programs guided by expert advice distilled in learning experiences of model educational systems. Sadly, there is none yet, as in the area of teacher training and development.

We know for a fact that as long as teaching at the basic levels does not step up in terms of competency and effectively, it will be difficult to expect students to understand the basic principles involving addition, subtraction, division and multiplication.

Imbibing a deep appreciation of these tools of deduction also play an important role in subjects other than math. Reading does not just imply an ability to recognize letters and words, but to be able to induce analytical thinking that in turn, should encourage a further search for knowledge.

The pandemic is no excuse to have disrupted the goal of improving the quality of teaching; in fact, it should have become an opportunity to use digital technologies to reach out to more public school teachers.

Heavy hand

One area that deserves better attention is the concept of a school-based management system. In simpler terms, it means giving public schools a bigger share of decision-making to improve teaching and learning conditions and student outcomes.

The heavy hand of a bureaucratic DepEd, from central to regional and division levels, has increasingly been cited as an exacerbating cause in the standstill adoption of meaningful change towards improving the quality of education in primary and secondary public schools.

A case study published by the Asian Development Bank last year noted that school principals were often bound by very small amounts of funds; and even discretionary funds provided by the DedEd came with certain conditions for their use, i.e., utility payments and small repairs, but not for learning materials and equipment essential in the teaching-learning process.

The authors of the ADB case study believe that school-level decision-making will “encourage principals, teachers, and parents to exert greater initiative in meeting the needs of students and the community.”

Reframing a sound concept of basic learning management may ultimately demand from the DepEd a more liberal approach in leadership, such as trusting and sharing K-to-12 public schools with enough funds for small but important expenses like internet access.

Returning to normal learning

The pandemic is also not a reason to stop creating new solutions that can give students a more meaningful education, whether it is through improved blended learning modules or face-to-face classroom learning where infection levels are non-existent.

COVID-19 and its emerging more infectious variants are likely to prolong severe lockdown approaches on the education sector more than any in the economy, which would further contribute to the degradation of our graduates’ competitiveness.

The acquiescence of Briones to the views of her President and the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) is typical of a servile bureaucrat’s stance, but she should not fail at trying to come up with steps, however cautious, to return to normal learning.

Real world experiences abound in allowing kids back to school, especially in countries that have started vaccinating the most vulnerable members of the population as a safeguard to preventing health resources from breaching critical resource levels.

While even one life is still too precious to lose, we can build safeguards that capitalize on a new studies by scientists from the University College London and the Universities of York, Bristol and Liverpool that the overall risk of children becoming severely ill or dying from this virus is extremely low.

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