THE Department of Education (DepEd) has announced that it is developing an “enhanced curriculum” to address the reasons for the poor showing of Filipino high schoolers in the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
The PISA is a worldwide study held every three years to measure the performance of 15-year-old students on the subjects of Mathematics, Science, and Reading. The purpose is to provide education officials comparable data that can be used to improve policies and outcomes.
Speaking on the public briefing “Laging Handa,” DepEd Undersecretary Diosdado San Antonio said the 2018 PISA results mirrored the country’s own National Achievement Test (NAT) which also showed flagging scores.
Released on December 8, 2019, the PISA rankings showed Filipino secondary school children performed the worst among 79 countries in reading literacy and second lowest in both mathematical and scientific literacy.
“Tayo po ay may sariling National Achievement Test at nakikita naman natin sa resulta nitong NAT na hindi nga masyadong mataas ‘yung mga scores ng ating mag-aaral (We have our own National Achievement Test and based on its results, we can see that our students are not getting good scores),” San Antonio said.
It was only under Education Secretary Leonor Briones that the government decided to benchmark Filipino students against their foreign counterparts in an international large-scale assessment.
San Antonio said PISA results are useful in gauging the performance of high school students and pinpointing areas of the academic curriculum that requires some improvement.
“Ang feature na nakita po natin ay medyo congested po talaga ng curriculum natin. Ang daming kailangang ituro na kung minsan ay nagiging sanhi kaya wala nang natututunan nag bata (One feature that stood out is the congestion in our own curriculum. There are too many subjects being taught resulting in an overload to the point that kids can hardly absorb anything),” San Antonio said.
The solution DepEd came up with is to tweak the curriculum to focus only on what subjects the students can build on as they move up.
A curriculum review will enhance the system, San Antonio said but quickly clarified that it is not an “overhaul.”
“What we are working on is how to focus on what we consider of paramount importance … the foundational competencies that we can strengthen. We believe that if our students can do well in reading, writing, and mathematics as well as their socio-emotional skills, the rest would be easier to teach,” he said.
The objective is to orient the teachers to modify classroom conditions that would align with the PISA result.
Another factor being looked into is how much the medium of instruction is affecting the students’ performance.
