13 of 21 top scorers in NCAE from public high schools

The latest result of the National Career Assessment Examination (NCAE) has shown that public school students are not inferior to their private school counterparts.

In a press statement released by the Department of Education  (DepEd), 13 of the 21 fourth year high school students who obtained scores of 99 percent and above in the examination last August were from public secondary schools.

Apparently stung by the critical analysis of the results of the NCAE they administered to the 1.3 million graduating high school students in January this year, the DepEd has turned stingy on the details of results of the examination they administered to some 1.22 million graduating high school students last August.

The DepEd released the statement yesterday analyzing the results of the latest NCAE administered last Aug. 28, revealing only the number of examinees who obtained scores of 99 percent and above, which showed an increase from five to 21 and the increase in the number of examinees who scored high in the general scholastic aptitude part of the exam.

Education Secretary Jesli Lapus was quoted as saying that the satisfactory performance of public school students in the NCAE indicated that the DepEd was improving the quality of education in the public education system.

“The results showed that we are making some headway in our effort to improve education especially in our public school system,” Lapus said in the statement.

Of the 1.22 million fourth year high school students who took the NCAE last Aug. 28, 21 examinees garnered scores of 99 percent and above, putting them within the DepEd’s “Club 99+.”

DepEd said there were only five examinees that were able to join the “elite” group among the 1.3 million NCAE examinees last January 2007 for school year 2006-07 graduates.

According to their figures, more examinees got higher scores in the general scholastic aptitude part of the NCAE, which tended to diagnose the readiness of examinees to go on to college.