DepEd: Improvements in basic education seen, but there's still much to be done

MANILA, Philippines - Education Secretary Armin Luistro, in his “The State of Basic Education: Gaining Ground” report delivered before the Philippine Business for Education (PBED) yesterday at the Tower Club in Makati City, bared that DepEd has seen mixed results in the performance levels of the department, as shown by the results of the 2011 National Achievement Test (NAT), and the participation and cohort survival rates of public school students.

The NAT results for school year 2010-2011, he said, has seen slight improvements for both the elementary and high school levels, compared to previous years. NAT results of elementary school students for 2010-2011 showed that their mean percentage score (MPS) slightly improved to 68.15 from school year 2009-2010’s 68.01. The MPS in the NAT for school year 2008-09, was 65.55, 64.81 for school year 2007-08, and 59.94 in school year 2006-07.

For the high school students, the NAT MPS for school year 2010-2011 was 47.93, an improvement from the previous school year, 2009-2010’s MPS of 45.56. It will be recalled that the 2010 NAT MPS of high school students saw a drop from the previous year, 2008 to 2009’s MPS of 46.71.

The better MPS for school year 2010-2011 was also lower than the NAT MPS of 49.26 in school year 2007-2008.

The participation rate in the elementary level has seen an improvement from 2009-2010 that recorded 85.01 percent to 89.89 percent in school year 2010-2011.

However, in the high school level, there was a slight drop from 62.38 of SY 2009-2010 percent to 60.93 percent in SY 2010-2011.

The cohort survival rate or the percentage of students that made it to the next higher level in both elementary and high school also declined from 2007 to 2010.

For the elementary school level, the cohort survival rate slightly dropped from SY 2009-2010’s 74.38 percent to SY 2010-2011’s 74.24 percent. For the secondary level, the cohort survival rate slightly improved from 78.5 percent to 79.41 percent.

On the dropout rate, it was learned that the elementary level saw a slight increase from 6.28 percent in SY 2009-2010 to 6.29 percent in SY 2010-2011. For the high school level, there was an improvement, from a dropout rate in SY 2009-2010 of 7.95 percent to a lower 7.89 percent in SY 2010-2011.

“At the national level, while we have achieved some improvements, there’s still much to be done for our country’s basic education system,” Luistro admitted to PBED executives.

Ramon del Rosario Jr., a former Finance Secretary during the Ramos administration and now chairman of the Philippine Business for Education (PBED), said that business groups are not only supporting DepEd, but encouraging it also to pursue the “K+12 BEC” program despite criticisms from some sectors.

Del Rosario and top officials of major business groups such as Ed Lacson, president, Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP); Julian Payne, president, Canadian Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines; Alfredo Ayala, chairman, Business Processing Association of the Philippines; Dr. Chito Salazar, PBED president; Ernie Santiago, president, Semiconductor and Electronics Industries of the Philippines; and Edward Ong, chairman, education committee of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Jose Luis Yulo, president, the Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines Foundation were signatories to a memorandum of agreement with Luistro for the PBED support of K to 12 program.