Our failing high school education

The recent EDCOM 2 Report, which screams, “Student proficiency rates plunge from 30 percent in Grade 3 to 0.47 percent in Grade 12,” has set politicians and education planners into a new round of finger-pointing.

Based on the Early Language, Literacy and Numeracy Assessment (ELLNA) and National Achievement Test (NAT) conducted from 2023 to 2025, the EDCOM 2 noted worrying declines in proficiency in Grades 3, 6, 10 and 12.

The study stated that only 30.5 percent of Grade 3 learners who took the ELLNA were considered proficient or highly proficient. At this stage, students are expected to have mastered foundational skills such as “recognizing letters and sounds, reading common words, understanding short passages, counting independently or solving simple numerical problems.”

It gets worse from here. The percentage of proficient or highly proficient students fell to 19.56 percent in Grade 6, then plummeted to 0.74 percent in Grade 10 and 0.40 percent in Grade 12, the final year of senior high school.

These empirical findings are not new to us in the higher education sector.

Every year, universities accept hundreds of senior high school graduates with weak foundational skills in mathematics, the sciences, language, reading comprehension and communication.

Many universities need to offer bridging programs to help students catch up with the requirements of university education.

But it appears that many members of Congress have not used these powerful findings in their deliberations on bills.

The accusing finger is often pointed at the teachers and the curriculum.

During deliberations on the proposed amendments to the Teacher Education Council (TEC) law in 2024, politicians repeatedly insisted that poor pre-service teacher training, particularly in curriculum content, was the primary cause of poor student performance on the PISA.

Their response – take away the power of CHED in developing the teacher education curriculum and selection of Centers of Excellence, and instead give it to the Teacher Education Council which, at that time, had done very little to develop teacher education in the country.

I opposed this measure because, although there may be a correlation between pre-service teacher preparation and student performance, numerous intervening variables must be considered before drawing this conclusion. 

I will give you nine reasons why even the best teacher-training curriculum will not produce good student performance:

One issue is the poor quality of many teacher education institutions. More than 1,000 colleges and universities offer these programs. They are easy to establish since they don’t need laboratories, specialized facilities or costly equipment – unlike technical courses. Once a program is approved, closing it is nearly impossible.

CHED identified and awarded 120 best-performing teacher education HEIs in 2024 through the EQUATE Awards, but has not closed more than 200 non-compliant and poor-performing programs.

Two, teacher education is not the first choice for most students entering university. Students prefer degree programs perceived to offer higher returns or to enable them to become OFWs, such as nursing, medical technology, accountancy, business administration and tourism management.

Three, it is uncertain if DepED recruits the top graduates from teacher-training institutions. Instead, the common reports are anecdotal stories of “palakasan” affecting the hiring of new teachers in many public schools.

Four, I have neither seen nor read evaluation studies assessing the quality of DepEd in-service training and its impact on teaching effectiveness and classroom learning. Undergraduate or pre-service training provides the foundations for good teaching; in-service training produces better teachers.

Five, do DepEd’s compensation and promotion systems recognize and reward the best teachers and inspire them to continue improving?

Six, the learning environment in public schools is not conducive to improving student performance. I’m not just referring to the lack of classrooms (now estimated at 165,433 by EDCOM), which may never be resolved. I’m referring to the lack of books and basic equipment, such as computers.

I have witnessed public school students draw a computer keyboard on cardboard during a class discussion about computers. It was truly heart-wrenching!

Seven, EDCOM 2 reports that substantial learning time is lost due to numerous school celebrations and contests. Let me add the cancellation of classes so students can wave flags to welcome politicians whenever they visit the school.

Eight, are you aware that under RA 11358, there’s a National Vision Screening Program that allows teachers to use vision screening kits to identify refractive errors, such as nearsightedness, in kindergarten students? This promotes early intervention, including the provision of free glasses to those in need. Without early detection, students with impaired vision will struggle academically. But we don’t have enough optometrists to make this work.

Nine, students from low-income families who walk to school without eating breakfast will not experience improved learning outcomes. Without significant government intervention, malnourished and stunted students will struggle to catch up with their peers in the classroom.

So, politicians need to stop shaming teachers or blaming the curriculum for low student proficiency. The nine factors play a greater role in outcomes than the commonly blamed targets.

Now that the EDCOM has announced what we have long known, what is DepEd’s plan to address these problems?

I hope we don’t have to wait for an EDCOM 3 to say the same thing years from now.

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