Scarred education of Filipino youths

Jimbo, during his first year in high school right before schools closed because of the pandemic, was consistently quarter after quarter in the honors roll. When hybrid classes resumed last year, his grades saw a significant deterioration, which his teachers attributed to a loss of focus.

Under total lockdown during the first pandemic year when schooling was suspended, Jimbo became detached from the rhythm of learning. When classes resumed last year, online classes failed to rouse him back from distractions, mainly gaming and forays on social media.

Such stories are not rare in the Philippines, especially among those whose families faced economic challenges because of lost or diminished earnings. The effect of the last two years was more telling on youths who were less motivated in school and who received average or barely passing grades.

Thus, if pre-pandemic academic standards were applied to those who took last year’s final exams, many would surely have failed. Fortunately and unfortunately, many teachers confessed to being lenient in giving grades, mainly in recognition of the extraordinary times.

Definitely, one of the biggest and deepest scars left behind by the pandemic, and which the current administration of President Marcos must give more attention to, is the significant deterioration of learning by our Filipino youth during the two and a half years that face-to-face classes were suspended.

Huge learning gaps

Four months after schools were allowed to let their students physically enter classrooms, teachers at the primary and secondary levels are struggling to fill in the huge learning gaps caused by a handicapped mentoring.

During the pandemic, teachers were forced by circumstances to use unfamiliar learning tools fit for a hybrid lesson plan (in the case of basic education), or full online classes (for higher learning). While teachers have gained invaluable lessons from utilizing technology and using digital tools to supervise their pupils’ learning, the same cannot be said for their students.

Most students, on all levels of learning, found the pandemic-tailored teaching challenging if not difficult to adapt to. The ability to learn was mostly dependent on family income levels, where the poorest saw significant numbers of dropouts and loss of learning.

With the more affluent families, learning became a markedly shared responsibility of parents and teachers, the former would render more supervisory hours for their children not only because they were also cooped up at home, but recognizing the shortfalls of the new normal learning.

The poor degree of learning was also more distinctly noticeable based on social class. Primary level students in rural areas were less inclined to follow through on daily lessons, especially when they were aware that teachers would only personally follow up at best once a week.

Despite all the planning and good intentions, last school year’s graduates showed a marked loss vis-à-vis the usual academic standards. At all grade levels, expected knowledge in the sciences, math, and reading comprehension were not fully distilled, exposing big stumbling blocks to the learning challenges this school year.

Change catalysts

DepEd faces a particularly huge burden of accelerating learning for its school children to mitigate any more deformities of high school graduates in the next five to 10 years.

Economic think tanks have been overly stressing the economic effects of a subpar education during the pandemic, which they say will be reflected in the quality of job seekers in the medium- and long-term if learning institutions are not able to provide effective change catalysts.

Schools and teachers have now become aware of digital tools for learning, even if their uses have been at beginners’ levels. The DepEd should consider its continued and increased use, not only to give learning the needed boost, but also to correct the fundamental flaws of the country’s basic education.

The results of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2018 that the Philippines first participated in tells us that an overhaul of fundamental learning blocks is needed to make our students become more analytical, less parrot-like in their quest for knowledge.

Utilizing digital tools under a restructured learning curricula will not only ensure better PISA scores in future, but will be in keeping with initiatives by a growing number of countries that recognize the scarring that has happened to their own students.

Investments in research and innovation

A study by the OECD about education recovery after COVID-19 in developed economies showed markedly new investments in the deployment of new devices or infrastructure for distance learning, as well as in classrooms for teachers and students use.

More importantly, the study noted the enormous potential of innovation in education that was revealed by the pandemic if only more resources were given to research. Such a concept is relatively new to the Philippines, and is not often regarded as a key agent for change.

The budget for education in the Philippines continues to be the biggest allocation by the government, and the significant increase in the DepEd’s allocation next year to more than P700 billion from just P633.3 billion this year should be put to better use.

In the approved budget by the President recently, the controversial P150 billion confidential fund for DepEd, which would roughly be equivalent to a fifth of its total allocation, passed muster. The amount is supposedly earmarked for intelligence use, a practice that has no precedence yet, thus generating all the heated discussions in Congress when introduced.

Hopefully, in this case, such “intelligence” spending will translate to money intelligently spent to improve the delivery of basic education.

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