Quality Education Design

Nakakalungkot ang nangyaring pag-aresto kay Lolo Narding Floro. Dito makikita ang double standard na hustisya sa ating bansa. Kapag mahirap nakukulong, pero kapag mayaman nakakalaya. May kilala nga tayo na isang makapangyarihang tao nahatulan na pero nasa laya pa rin.

Under RA 10389 (Recognizance Act), Lolo should not have even been required to post bail; he should have been granted recognizance. But the law has many requirements and this would have taken days. If elected, I plan to amend the law so that people like Lolo can avail of recognizance quickly.

I’m also pushing for the Alternative Penalties Act, which would allow courts to impose alternative penalties (such as community service, home detention, rehabilitation or treatment, suspended sentences and exclusion orders) for minor offenses.

Catholic Theologians Speak! #1
Fr. Amado Picardal, CSsR (Member, DaKaTeo)
DaKaTeo - Catholic Theological Society of the Philippines supports Leni Robredo

A new weekly series (every Friday until the end of 2021) om Philippine basic education.

Next week: Early childhood development.

To subscribe, go to juanmiguelluz.wordpress.com. Subscription is free and you will receive articles automatically once posted.

~ Mike Luz

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RETHINKING PHILIPPNE BASIC EDUCATION
A series of Essays on Basic Education
by Juan Miguel Luz
Fellow, FEU Public Policy Forum

Philippine Basic Education is not in good shape. While more Filipino kids are entering Grade 1 these days, too many are dropping out before completion of the entire K-12 cycle. Worse, of those completing the cycle, the levels of learning as revealed in large-scale international assessments are low – at one to two or more standard deviations below proficiency.

For years, the definition of success in education was measured as (a) Access to education and (b) the provision of education materials and infrastructure in basic education. It was a numbers-crunching exercise of indicators. Little attention was paid to Learning as argued in the World Bank’s World Development Report on the topic of Learning in 2018 (Learning to Realize Education’s Promise). To be fair to the Philippines and the Department of Education (DepED), other countries around the world fell into the same trap.

In 2018, the Philippines, through DepED, participated in PISA (Programme in International Student Assessment) for the first time to abysmal results. A year later, the country participated in TIMSS (Trends in International Math and Science Survey) with similar results. A third large-scale international assessment, SEA-PLM (Southeast Asia Program Learning Metrics), confirmed the same conclusions.

Different groups in the country, particularly those participating in the DepED-organized Education Forum, have recognized the gravity of the situation and have raised alarm bells. The call for a second Education Commission 30 years after the first EDCOM has been even as educators lament the fact that a number of issues today mirror the issues back then. Did we not, as an education system and as a country, not learn anything from the first EDCOM?

In discussing the Philippine Education system, critical questions are asked. How is the system organized? Why is it under-performing? Why is overall learning low? How can this state of low performance be remedied?

The essays written in this series looks at the education system as a series of education levels a child goes through in the course of their journey to becoming an educated, fully functioning member of society. Each level adds more value to what a child learns, each level having different learning objectives.

An education system is necessarily complex with multiple layers, countless moving parts, human emotion, and multiple stakeholders with their different interests. Having seen the insides of the Department of Education and the different interests and tensions therein, it is best to take the system apart in easily discerned pieces before putting them back into a single whole.

The entire system, I think, is best looked at in parts corresponding with the Learning age of a child.

 From age 0 to 5 years old: Very early and Early Childhood Development; day care and pre-school. The learning objective is early socialization and communication skills development. Learning about the Self.

 Kindergarten (5 years old): The learning objective is socialization, social habit formation, and early language and communication skills. Learning about themselves and others – the concept of community.

 Lower Primary (Grades 1 – 3): Learning to read, write and do the four operations of arithmetic (3Rs). Learning to ask insightful and meaningful questions. Learning how to report what a child observes through their five senses. Learning about community and the country.

 Upper Primary (Grades 4 – 6): Learning higher order thinking skills (critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, collaboration). Learning about the larger community.

 Junior High School (Grades 7 – 10): Learning to think by subject discipline. How to do open field/scoping research. How to write essays and thought pieces. Thinking about the country and the world.

 Senior High School (Grades 11 – 12): Looking at career, work options. Longer term planning. Thinking about society and civilization.

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To read the full article, click on one of two links below:

https://publicpolicy.feu.org.ph/article-series/rethinking-basic-education-a-series-of-essays-on-basic-education-by-juan-miguel-luz/

Or,

https://wordpress.com/post/juanmiguelluz.com/430

To subscribe to the full series (free) and receive an article a week every Friday until the end of 2021:

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The 2019 TIMSS (Trends in Math and Science Study) test has been released (December 8, 2020) and Philippine Grade 4 students who were randomly selected to take the test nationwide scored lowest in math and science of all the countries tested. This is a similar result to the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) test administered to Grade 9 students and in which the Philippines first participated in in 2018.

The poor test results speak to the poor learning of Filipino school children in math, science and reading (PISA) and math and science (TIMSS). We need to turn this around if we want the country to develop.

This is going to be a gargantuan task and one that will take at least three test cycles (nine years) before we will see significant progress because the problem is one of foundational learning (or a lack thereof).

This is no quick fix. This is a time to put our collective heads together, get our hands dirty, and work on overhauling our education system

To see my initial assessment of what we need to start to do to address this problem (addressing what both PISA and TIMSS reveal), read my commentary on the PISA results written a year ago (December 2019):

RESPONDING TO THE PISA 2018 RESULTS: Using this to set an Olympic Goal for Philippine Education
– Juan Miguel Luz

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RESPONDING TO THE PISA 2018 RESULTS: Using this to set an Olympic Goal for Philippine Education COMMENTARY (December 7, 2019) J. M. Luz NOTE: Published in Rappler online, December 9, 2019. The 2018 PISA results have been released for the Philippines and the results are dismal.  Test resu…