Philippine Basic Education

For improvement, we often look around us and copy what seems to work better. This happens as well in basic education. The challenge in education, however, is that schooling is not one specific task. It cannot be distilled in one activity or even one policy. Education is a system composed of many parts that work together and affect each other. Lifting one specific aspect is not necessarily the same as copying the entire system. And if done carelessly, we may even be attributing success to the wrong aspect. Take, for instance, the curriculum. We may hastily ascribe the apparent success of schools in Finland to what they teach and how they teach. What if the success of these schools really hinge on how well prepared their teachers are? In this case, what they teach and how they teach really do not matter. What really makes them successful is that the teachers are better trained. Simply copying Finland's curriculum therefore is not a recipe for uplifting schools without considering the...

Just before the start of a new school year, communities are again helping out in preparing the classrooms. Of course, some politicians take this as photo opportunities. After all, being photographed while applying fresh paint on a wall may bring the message that something is being done to help basic education in the Philippines. Yes, walls with fresh paint may seem inviting but the challenges faced by students in schools in the Philippines should be addressed with solutions that actually understand and address their problems. The prevalence of poverty, the fact that a significant number of parents are working overseas, and the various tracks now available for senior high school should make it obvious that students in schools need a individual who would offer a listening ear and provide guidance. Students in the Philippines, like students in other countries, need counseling. Yet, the country remains short in the number of guidance counselors. Earlier this year, ABS-CBN News reported ,...

There is no question that the Philippine basic education system needs our attention. K to 12 education in the United States likewise faces serious challenges. One big thing that the US has as an advantage is that it is a much wealthier country. Nevertheless, basic education in the US still requires our attention. Incidentally, what the US needs to examine is also relevant to the Philippines. So perhaps, the Philippines can learn from the mistakes that the US is making. Natalie Wexler, an education journalist, recently wrote an opinion in Forbes . Above copied from Forbes The three mistakes are: The real problems begin  at the high school level . The most important factor in educational achievement is a  highly effective teacher .   Education needs to be  data-driven .    The above also contains links that illustrate how much emphasis legislators, nonprofit organizations, education policy makers are giving on these items. The main problem is...

A centralized system heavily relies on the competence of the few, fully ignores diversity, and often fails in cultivating local innovation. In the Philippines, the offices in Manila frequently make decisions for the rest of the country. One clear demonstration is its highly centralized and micromanaged education system. As a result, errors which are always likely to happen can easily spread and infect the entire nation. The obsession to control every part of basic education is, for instance, quite evident in the Department's prescribed curriculum in high school chemistry. A row in the curriculum on distinguishing between homogeneous and heterogeneous mixtures lists "Laser Pointer, dual-function, with dry cells" as science equipment. Someone must be trying to sell as many laser pointers to schools in the Philippines. Indeed, a centralized system is either an effective way of spreading ignorance or favoring some "business transactions". Above copied from the D...

Years ago, John Tierney wrote an article in the Atlantic   that criticized our obsession with national rankings of school districts. After all, as Tierney pointed out, very few could really afford to move from one state to another just for a "better school". This point becomes even more evident with international rankings. Rankings, however, putting aside vanity, could be somewhat useful if schools that did well were able to provide us with some information of what actually worked. EducationWeek  tried to do this in its most recent Quality Counts 2018 report . Five traits were found to be common among the high-performing states: Good economy High academic learning outcomes High spending per pupil High college participation Good early childhood education Above copied from The Atlantic Like a family that is in a good financial situation, a state that is doing well economically has much more time and energy to worry about things beyond the basic needs. High gradu...

Imagine a place that sits at ground zero of a drug addiction crisis . As expected, it is a place where one out of ten working-age individuals is unemployed and nearly half of the families live below the poverty line . Only four out of five are able to finish high school. As a result, nearly half of its residents over the age of 25 do not have a high school diploma. In 2010 , only 3 out of ten students are proficient in math and less than two out of ten are able to pass a standardized science test. These numbers are not from the Philippines but from a community in West Virginia in the United States, McDowell county.  For the Philippines, it maybe helpful to look at what this county is doing to address challenges in basic education. After all, the county has been showing a dramatic improvement in the past few years. And at the heart of this progress is a union, a union of teachers. The turn around of McDowell county is largely attributed to a partnership between public and private ...

To state that there is currently a great inequity in education in the Philippines is accurate. Sadly, my alma mater, Ateneo de Manila University stands as a glaring testament to this gross bias. While 90 percent of families in the Philippines can be considered low-income, one obviously will not find 90 percent of the students enrolled in Ateneo coming from poor families. Poor basic education in both elementary and high school prevents a lot from even entering college. To make matters worse, unlike in the United States, elite universities such as the Ateneo have campuses for both elementary and high school. In the Philippines, catering to the priviliged therefore starts very early. Schmitt Hall, home of the Department of Chemistry, where I spent most of my time during college, above photo copied from the Ateneo de Manila website Below is a socioeconomic classification of the Philippines in 2009. Above copied from 1985-2009 Family Income Distribution in the Philippines present...

My son belongs to a soccer team that just won first place in their group in the Suburban Friendship League in Northern Virginia. Their team also scored the second highest number of goals, forty six in ten games, in the entire division. Armed only with skills and even talent can only bring a soccer team halfway to winning a game. Good positions and good decisions, and therefore, teamwork is extremely necessary. Annandale soccer team celebrating their victory The coach of a soccer team needs to see the field in its entirety and so does his or her players. Every play is indeed a learning opportunity. the coach helps assess every move his or her team makes. And between games, the team goes to practice, reviewing their past games, and studying what the team may be able to improve. Focusing on the importance of maintaining good positions, creating opportunities, keeping possession, and thoughtful defending, are obviously key principles. Still, careful planning, keen observations, and t...

Students in the Philippines have not been participating in international standardized exams for over a decade now. In 2003, fourth grade students in the Philippines ranked 23rd out of 25 countries and in 2008, during which only students from science high schools participated, the Philippines ranked last among ten countries participating. Teachers in primary and secondary schools in the Philippines also partook in the Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M). The results of this study have been recently analyzed and in terms of quality assurance, teacher education in the Philippines does not fare well. In terms of both content and pedagogical knowledge, math teachers in the Philippines are near the bottom. The following graphs summarize the findings. Above graph based on Quality Assurance in Teacher Education and Outcomes: A Study of 17 Countries Lawrence Ingvarson, Glenn Rowley Educational Researcher Vol 46, Issue 4, pp. 177 - 193 First published date...

"Teach Your Children" was a song written by Graham Nash while I was growing up. The second part, "Teach your parents well,Their children's hell will slowly go by, and feed them on your dreams. The one they pick's the one you'll know by", had always impressed me although it was just simply a repeat of the first part with parents and children exchanging places. The message was quite clear to me. We were all in this together and amidst our struggles, we should always be kind and tolerant with others and with ourselves. But since the song starts with "teach", the song for me now takes a different meaning when it comes to basic education. This new meaning comes with the realization that basic education does involve not only the children but also their parents. Poverty profoundly affects education. Clearly, addressing this challenge needs to include the family. Such an approach obviously requires more resources, more effort, and more time. Not addr...

Back in June of 2016, the staff of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/ The World Bank produced a report on Basic Education in the Philippines . The report mainly examines how funds flow from the Department of Education and how these are spent in the schools. The report notes lack of transparency as well as efficiency, which greatly reduces the benefits of greater funding. However, even with an efficiently run bureaucracy, factors that negatively affect learning outcomes are very much present. These factors are: (1) Teacher quality The report notes: "With the exception of English at the elementary level, the average elementary or high school teacher could answer fewer than half of the questions on the subject content tests correctly. Since these tests are closely aligned with the curriculum, the results suggest that teachers face significant challenges in teaching a considerable portion of the current curriculum." The following figure from the ...

Headlines are often composed to capture people's attention, sometimes without faithfulness to the truth. Reading the entire article is usually necessary to extract what is real and what is simply sensational. And when we read, we frequently look for confirmation of our prejudgments. Thus, it is not surprising that even with real news, we tend to gravitate towards the fake pieces of an article. For instance, it is so much easier to believe that schools in the United States for both elementary and high school education are falling behind school systems in other countries. After all, one can easily reach this conclusion by simply looking at one number, the average score of American students in an international standardized exam. Above copied from the Washington Post The headline maybe valid. US students currently rank 40th out of 73 countries in an international math exam. Thus, US basic education is indeed falling behind. But there is really so much about education that it ca...

Richard DuFour states clearly that "the purpose of our school is to ensure all students learn at high levels". The purpose of education is learning and not competition yet we often compare students against each other instead of focusing on each student's progress. As a result, when a student fails to meet the standards we think is appropriate for a given age, we agonize on whether to promote or retain without even considering the fact that learning takes time and the amount of time varies naturally from one child to another. We frequently equate the speed a child learns with smartness in spite of knowing that a child's background greatly influences a child's performance in school. Thus, when a child fails, we do not even consider the possibility that failure often means requiring more time, allowing a child to grow. In fact, the National Association of School Psychologists has long stated its position regarding retention : "Given the frequent use of the ineff...

Richard DuFour's tenure as head of Stevenson High School in Illnois is uniquely marked with multiple National Blue Ribbon School awards. His life is a true example of actions speaking louder than words. His message for school reform is simple: Work together and make education a reality for all. All means all, no exceptions. I have not met DuFour in person, but with a few words on an email to the principal of the school my children currently attend, he showed his unrelenting encouragement and support for people who care about basic education: "The blog by your parent could have been written by a Michael Fullan or John Hattie. Incredibly impressive." That meant a lot coming from someone who had not only brought great things to a school or a school district, but had also inspired so many education leaders like our principal at Mason Crest Elementary School. Above copied from Solution Tree I am reposting the article that DuFour commented on. This article in so many w...

US president Donald Trump made a scathing comment on public schools in his inauguration speech, "But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge; and the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential." Trump criticizes public schools along with crime, gangs and drugs. US public schools certainly do not belong to the same category as crime, gangs and drugs. First of all, there is variation is learning outcomes. This is seen even with standardized international exams such as PISA: Above obtained from PISA 2012 Results: Excellence Through Equity And second, the variation can be explained by a school's socio-economic status. Wha...

No curricular reform would work without addressing first the basic needs of school children. When kids have to climb cliffs and cross a river using a bamboo raft, their safety needs to be addressed first. A video showing what some Filipino children have to do just to attend school has been loaded on  YouTube  by Kyle Jennermann more than a year ago. The video has been viewed more than a hundred thousand times. Finally, the Philippines government has taken the right step in improving basic education by providing a safe bridge for school children to cross in Barangay Lingating in Baungon, Bukidnon. The new bridge was formally opened two days before this past Christmas. Among the first to cross is Bukidnon's representative Maria Lourdes Acosta-Alba. Above copied from Facebook page of Rep. Maria Lourdes Acosta-Alba Kyle Jennerman did note on his Facebook page that the Department of Public Works and Highways paid attention to the video he posted. He sha...