About 25 percent of the 51,907 examinees who took the Department of Education’s Accreditation and Equivalency (A&E) Test succeeded in their bid to enter mainstream education at the high school and college levels.
Education Secretary Jesli Lapus said yesterday that a total of 12,425 examinees passed the A&E Test administered by the DepEd’s Alternative Learning System (ALS), with its most popular passer being Filipino world boxing champion Manny Pacquiao.
About 46,219 of the 51,907 examinees took the high School A&E Test to gain a certificate from the Department of Education (DepEd) that will be enable them to apply for entrance to college, while 5,688 took the elementary school level A&E Test, which would enable them to apply for entrance to high school.
Some 10,887 of the A&E test’s high school examinees passed, while 1,538 examinees hurdled the elementary level test.
Those who pass these exams, the DepEd said, will be given temporary certificates prior to the issuance of the A&E Certificate signed by Lapus.
The temporary certificates are now available at DepEd regional and division offices, as well as the DepEd Bureau of Alternative Learning System (BALS) office at the DepEd central office in Ortigas Center, Pasig City.
The A&E exams are part of the DepEd’s non-formal education program and are designed to gauge “functional literacy” of the examinees and provide two levels of certification of learning achievement equivalent to the literacy requirement needed to enter formal high schools or colleges.
It allows out-of-school youths and adults to get certificates deemed comparable to the Elementary Certificate and Secondary Diploma that will be their ticket to a high school or college education.
In April, Lapus announced that Pacquiao, along with his brother and fellow boxer, Bobby, took the test last February at a General Santos City school.
Results of the latest test are available at the DepEd website www.deped.gov.ph. Examinees may also get the test results by visiting the DepEd Oplan Balik Eskwela Command Center at the DepEd Central Office or calling hotlines, 636-4880, 633-7218 and 633-5429. The Command Center will be open until June 8. – Rainier Allan Ronda