City to publish results of teachers' evaluation

The Cebu City government is going to publish the results of the overall assessment of teacher-applicants based on their academic performance, eligibility, teaching experience, and teaching aptitude to show which schools, colleges, and universities in Cebu perform well.

Mayor Tomas Osmeña made this announcement in a consultative meeting with top officials of the Department of Education in the region and in the city, public elementary and secondary school principals and some heads of colleges and universities yesterday morning.

"As you can see, we have a very serious problem here. I'm ashamed. It is difficult to realize that parents sacrifice to send their children to school and yet they're not getting their money's worth," Osmeña said.

Results of the exam would be published in local papers to create a competition among colleges and universities here and to encourage them to improve their curriculum and their quality of education, he said.

As it appears, incompetence of teachers contributes to the dismal performance of students in their academics.

Joy Augustus Young, the consultant of the mayor on educational affairs, presented the result of the study he conducted on how good or dismal education graduates from the various state and private colleges and universities performed in the recent set of examinations given to teacher-applicants in the elementary and secondary levels.

In the comprehension and retention aspect, the secondary teacher-applicants seem to do better than their elementary counterparts, maybe because secondary teacher-applicants took major subjects, Young said.

And even those who scored comparatively higher in their verbal and non-verbal reasoning abilities failed in the comprehension and retention test.

In addition, it also appears that teaching experience has little or no bearing at all because results of the exam showed they scored poorly in teaching demonstration, comprehension and retention, among others.

"There are teachers who have high points in academics and board exams and with at least three years of experience did poorly in teaching demonstration," Young said.

To address this apparent defect in the educational system, Young said they will ask DepEd to change the scoring grade, such as reducing the points given to teaching experience, which is at present given 30 points under the scoring grade for interview and other skills, which is also given 20 percent in the overall ranking.

He said points for school ability, verbal and non-verbal reasoning ability tests, teaching aptitude test and English language skills should be given more points in the scoring grade.

At present, it comprises only 10 percent in the overall scoring.

A total of 1,162 teacher-applicants took the series of exams given by DepEd recently but only 92 of them made it to the passing grade of 60 percent. Only 10 applicants made it to the 75 percent standard passing grade.

And since the city is in need of 1,000 teachers, the reduction of the passing grade to 50 percent was pushed.

Further, the mayor said he is opening the hiring to applicants outside of the city and even those from Talisay City will be accommodated as long as they are qualified.