DepEd urged to skip PISA comprehension test in 2021, improve curriculum first

The Philippines should not participate in next year's worldwide reading comprehension assessment for students after placing at the bottom in 2018, but instead spend the time improving the school curriculum and learners' competencies, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian said Thursday.

Gatchalian made the recommendation at the conclusion of the oversight panel hearing on the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results, in which the Philippines ended up as the worst performer, ranking last out of 79 countries.

PISA is a global reading comprehension study conducted by the inter-government group Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on 600,000 students aged 15 years old around the world.

The Philippines joined the study in 2018 and Filipino students scored a mean of 340 points, way below the OECD average of 487 points.

“As it is, our curriculum is too congested. Ang tinuturo sa bata on the average is 300 competencies, eh 200 lang ang school days. It is one day per competency or more, mahirap para sa bata iyon. Kaya isa sa mga reporma na pinapatupad ng DepEd ngayon na sang-ayon kami ay iyong decongesting the curriculum para sa mas magandang pagtututo,” Gatchalian said.

“It will take time para ma-absorb ng mga bata ang mga reporma, and so my recommendation is for us not to take the PISA next year so we can give DepeEd more time to fix the curriculum and implement other reform programs,” Gatchalian added.

OECD’s Director for Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General Andreas Schleicher, for his part, shared Gatchalian’s observation that the competencies being taught to Filipino children need to be tweaked to enable the students to go beyond memorizing.

“It is not that students are not good at any of it. Students in the Philippines are actually quite good with producing subject matter content [that] they have to memorize. Students work quite well at the basics, but when asked to creatively apply the knowledge, they did not do well and this is a very large part of PISA,”  Schleicher said.

The PISA exam is held every three years, meaning the Philippines can participate again in 2024.

The year 2018 marked the first time that the Philippines participated in the PISA.

Gatchalian said that the Philippines should be ready to prove its mettle by that date.

“Alam naman na natin ang gagawin sa susunod, kaya puede na [tayo sumali] ulit sa 2024,” Gatchalian added. — BM, GMA News