Harry Potter publisher donates 50,000 books to DepEd

To encourage public school students to read more, the publisher of the popular Harry Potter series has donated 50,000 children’s reading books to the Department of Education (DepEd).

Education Undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz said the books donated by Scholastic Inc., worth around P5 million, will come in handy as the DepEd will implement starting this year its "Every Child a Reader by Grade Three" program.

"We want to develop a habit for reading among our students in the elementary level," he said.

Luz pointed out that before the donation, public schools had no good children’s reading books to encourage their students to read for fun. "You don’t expect a young student to stay up at night reading a textbook," he said.

Scholastic’s donation was one of the highlights of the three-day National Educators’ Congress in Bacolod City early this week, with First Daughter Evangeline Arroyo gracing the event.

Frank Wong, Scholastic’s director for the Asia-Pacific region, expressed hope that the DepEd will put their donation to good use.

The Philippines was chosen as the first stop in Scholastic’s campaign to donate children’s reading books to countries around the world.

"I hope that this will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship," Wong said.

The DepEd’s reading program mandates that only third grade students who can read can expect to be promoted to the next grade. Luz said they will conduct a reading test on all third grade students this schoolyear.

Public elementary school teachers handling grades one to three are also encouraged to prioritize reading lessons for their students, he said.

Luz said the DepEd’s implementation of an aggressive reading program was brought about by the dismal results of the High School Readiness Test (HSRT) administered to incoming high school freshmen in public schools last May 26, where only a miserable .64 percent of the 1.4 million examinees received a grade of at least 75 percent.

He said the DepEd, after analyzing the HSRT results, realized the examinees’ dismal performance was due to poor skills in reading and reading comprehension.

The DepEd also noticed that some high school students cannot read, the highest number being in Mindanao, where an estimated 10 percent of high school students are totally illiterate, Luz said.

He said the illiterate students were a product of the DepEd’s "continuous progression" policy wherein students are automatically promoted to the next grade so long as they complete the schoolyear. Then Education Secretary Edilberto de Jesus replaced this policy with a "performance-based" grading system last year.

Luz said improving the students’ reading skills will have a "domino effect" on their performance in English, math and science.

If the students can read properly and understand what they read, they can do better in tests in the three subjects as well as in other subjects, he said. — Rainier Allan Ronda