The latest PISA 2021 results will be released anytime soon. After being apprised of the initial results, education officials have preemptively tempered expectations, announcing that DepEd “is not expecting high scores.” Like the previous PISA 2018 results, the Philippines will most likely remain at the bottom. PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) is held every three years and intends to assess 15-year-old school pupils' performance in mathematics, science, and reading. We also join similar international studies like the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics (SEA-PLM). The results are pretty much the same. Notably, the SEA-PLM results formed the basis for asserting that 91% of Filipino children are grappling with learning poverty, a condition when one cannot read a simple text by the age of 10. Curiously, these assessments, including PISA, were conducted in English, even though English is the home language of only 6% of the Filipino test takers. The choice of English as the medium of testing is reminiscent of the 1925 educational survey by the Paul Monroe Commission. The study found that the reading ability of high school graduates was equivalent to that of a 5th grader in the US. Take note that the American Thomasite teachers were still here, and English was the only language used in school. The Monroe Commission reported that the restrictive English-only policy was the main culprit for academic underperformance due to a lack of productive discussion in the classroom.
A critical question arises. What precisely are our educational planners aiming to measure? Is it proficiency in math, science, reading, or English? If the goal is to produce English-speaking graduates for global employment, language proficiency tests like the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) or the locally administered Department of Education’s Teacher English Proficiency Test (TEPT) would be more fitting. By the way, the TEPT results reveal that only 2% of our teachers are proficient in English, and the rest are either low (45.95%) or nearly proficient (51.09%). Given that the TEPT results have been unchanging for the past 12 years, expecting teachers to prepare students to meet PISA standards in English seems unrealistic. The PISA standards expect students to be able “to explain phenomena scientifically, evaluate and design scientific inquiry, and interpret data and evidence scientifically,…apply scientific knowledge in the context of real-life situations.”
If we are indeed serious about developing science, math, and reading skills, then the government should invest more in education (among the PISA 2018 participating countries, Philippines has the lowest spending per learner). Decentralized intervention is also recommended. Each region should have a strategy with defined goals and milestones based on its performance and resources. The regional strategy must define what pedagogy, languages, materials, and testing modalities to use based on its context. Recent studies show that what works well with multilingual children is multilingual and multimodal pedagogy and assessments.
If we persist in participating in international tests, there are models to consider. Vietnam, a low-income developing nation, ranked fourth in science and 13th in reading, surpassing wealthier OECD countries. Vietnamese students took a paper-and-pencil test with questions contextualized in Vietnamese. It must be noted that in the 1970s, Vietnam decided to let go of French and used the Vietnamese language in all subject areas across all educational levels (with a provision for the mother tongue for ethnic minority groups). China was another topnotcher but they selected participants from four wealthy cities only. Multicultural countries like Malaysia chose Chinese, Malay, and Tamil (for SEA-PLM).
Most likely, when the new PISA results come in, we will go through another cycle of self-flagellation. At some point, I was resigned to the thought that we had the worst system, but I found it incredible that 91% of our 4th-grade pupils could not read a simple text. True enough, the basis was an English reading test. Despite decades of bad news, we should remain hopeful that things can change, but we should find the appropriate way to measure what our children really know. In the first place, PISA was meant for wealthy OECD countries, and only less than 40% of the countries participated. India abstained from joining PISA for the past 12 years because they felt that it was not culturally appropriate. And yet India has been instituting massive educational reforms through its New Education Policy (NEP) 2020, shifting the focus from rote learning to holistic, relevant, and problem-solving education. I hope that our policymakers, through the EDCOM 2, will do no less.
