By Rainier Allan Ronda
The Philippine Star 10/19/2004
Like their students, teachers in public secondary schools lack proficiency in English.
A mere 19 percent of the nation’s 53,000 public high school teachers earned a score of 75 percent or higher in the Self-Assessment Test for English (SATE) administered by the Department of Education (DepEd) in May last year, Education Secretary Florencio Abad revealed yesterday in a keynote speech at the opening of the three-day 2004 National Educators Congress in Bacolod City.
Even as the country’s quality of education continues to suffer, however, Malacañang welcomed yesterday the screening and recruitment of local educators by American companies for work in the United States.
In a press briefing, Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye noted with optimism the reported renewed interest by Americans to hire Filipino teachers and other skilled workers like nurses to fill in a growing demand.
This development would mean more money for the Philippines’ wobbling economy, the Palace said.
"As you know, if employed abroad, they can bring in remittances. So the net effect is positive as far as the economy is concerned," Bunye said.
While it also means losing highly skilled workers, Bunye conceded the government cannot stop qualified Filipinos from seeking better opportunities abroad.
Successful applicants in the US are expected to receive between $34,000 and $46,000 a year. Filipino nurses and caregivers are also in demand in the US.
In Thailand, Filipino English teachers now make up the largest category of Filipino migrant workers there, according to the Philippine embassy in Bangkok.
Filipino English teachers in Thailand, numbering more than 5,000, are generally paid between $400 and $800 a month, about equal or higher than their local counterparts’ salaries.
Ironically, proficiency in the English language is one of the advantages of Filipino overseas workers over foreign migrant workers. The Philippines is the only English-speaking country in Asia, a legacy of the American colonial period that ended in 1946, right after World War II.
"We have a market economy, so it depends on the demand and supply. We cannot stop our qualified people to apply for jobs that are available (abroad)," Bunye said.
Further validating the miserable state of the country’s education system is the Philippines’ bottom ranking, or third to last among 38 countries, in a global assessment of performance by high school students in math and science.
"These (figures) only validate what we have known all along — the Philippine education is in crisis," Abad said in the same event.
The Philippines placed a dismal 36th in the most recent result of Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) that sets the yardstick on the competence of local secondary students against the rest of the world.
TIMSS, formerly known as the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, was developed by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement to measure trends in students’ mathematics and science achievement.
According to Abad, the 19 percent of public high school teachers getting a decent grade of 75 percent or above is "no more than 10,000 out of around 51,000 teachers."
"That means some 41,000 of our teachers have inadequate proficiency in the English language," he said.
The poor performance of high school teachers in the SATE was previously left unmentioned by the DepEd, only saying that they have taken notice of the "topnotchers" in the exam who were subsequently tapped as English "mentors" to their fellow teachers in the ongoing "Mentor to the Teachers Program," which aims to improve English proficiency among public school teachers.
DepEd spokesperson Alice Pañares said they have already provided training to some 1,600 of teachers who topped the SATE to mentor their peers in English.
In the midst of the crisis in education, Abad called on all personnel in the department to work cohesively together to raise academic standards in public schools.
"We must begin to work hand-in-hand to make these solutions work and to cooperate with one another to make substantial improvements in our schools," he urged.
A huge 97.9 percent of almost a million fourth-year high school students failed to get a decent 75 percent "mastery level" grade in the National Achievement Test (NAT) last March 18. The students posted a mean percent score of 50.08 percent in English.
The total average percentage score of the NAT examinees was a miserable 44.36 percent, way off the 75 percent "passing grade."
It will also be recalled that the DepEd administered a diagnostic exam called the High School Readiness Test to all incoming freshmen students in public schools last May 26 to determine who should join the "bridge" program they had set up to improve competencies of students in the core subjects of English, Math and Science.
Only .64 percent of the HSRT takers were able to get a grade of 75 percent and above. Half of the 1.4 million incoming freshman examinees failed to get a score of 30 percent or higher. The DepEd has seen poor enrollment in their bridge program.
As the decline in the competence of teachers and students reach alarming levels, the DepEd has admitted that a number of textbooks used in public schools are riddled with errors.
Because of this, Abad has given orders for a review of all existing textbooks in public high schools by "external subject area experts," particularly history, English, science and mathematics.
He said the DepEd will be coming up with modules to guide teachers to spot and correct errors in textbooks when discussing the subject matter with their students in class.
A 75-year old academician earlier filed libel charges against self-styled quality textbook crusader, Antonio Calipjo-Go for the latter’s exposé on the textbook errors.
Go, academic supervisor of the Marian School in Sauyo, Novaliches, Quezon City, has bared that 431 "inane" and "grave factual and grammatical errors" were found in the history textbook "Asya: Nuon, Ngayon, at sa Hinaharap" authored by Dr. Teofista Vivar, a professor who teaches in the masteral program of the state-run Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila along with two others. Not enough funds
Meanwhile, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) warned yesterday that shortages in teachers and classrooms would worsen next school year due to the inadequate budget allocated by the administration.
ACT said this was made evident from data presented by the DepEd at the budget hearing before the House appropriations committee last week.
Antonio Tinio, ACT chairman, said that while the DepEd would hire 5,000 new classroom teachers and build 6,000 new classrooms in 2005, these would not be enough to alleviate ballooning deficit in these key resources.
"In spite of these new inputs, the DepEd’s own figures show that students and teachers must brace for a teacher shortage of 49,699 and a classroom shortage of 57,930. These are significantly higher than the current shortages (39,535 teachers and 51,947 classrooms)," Tinio said in a statement.
"The 2005 budget submitted by the Arroyo administration to Congress remains grossly inadequate, and reveals that President Arroyo’s pronouncements about improving the quality of education are mere lip service," he added.
The deteriorating conditions in public schools, Tinio said should be blamed on the President’s economic managers.
"This administration’s technocrats at the Department of Budget and Management and National Economic (and)Development Authority have kept the real value of the budget for basic education at the 1997 level. As a result, our public schools are experiencing their worst crisis ever," he said.
Tinio also took potshots at Rep. Rolando Andaya, chair of the House appropriations committee, for claiming that the government would hire a total of 20,000 new teachers in 2004 and 2005 while describing it as the "biggest teacher recruitment in history."
"To be accurate, the DepEd hired only 7,500 new classroom teachers in 2004 and is set to hire an additional 5,000 in 2005. So that’s only 12,500, significantly lower than the claimed 20,000 new teachers. The rest of the new items in 2004 and 2005 are for principal and non-teaching items (supervisor, clerks, etc.) necessary personnel, to be sure, but they won’t contribute to the reduction of actual class sizes," Tinio clarified.
"The truth is that the creation of new teaching items under the Arroyo administration has had no impact on the shortage of teachers, which has grown from 35,818 in 2002 to 49,699 in 2005," he added.
ACT further said that aside from grossly inadequate budget for resources, the 2005 education budget also failed to provide much needed funds for teachers’ salaries and benefits.
"There’s obviously no provision for any salary increase whatsoever. Moreover, there’s no or not enough money allotted to certain mandatory benefits such as the step increment and Loyalty Award," Tinio said.
ACT estimates that an additional P70 billion needs to be added to the current DepEd budget to wipe out resource shortages, provide for a P3,000 across-the-board salary increase for teachers, and adequately fund maintenance and operating expenses of public schools.
she teaches soldiers in intramuros? i forgot it was something like that and like she was so strict and always gives us quizzes and she always talk fast like shes doing tongue twisters or something lol
I don't think anyone here is trying to trivialize the issue, though. It does sound like they are doing some good things to try to help the issue in the article.