‘It’ll be tougher to gain honors in public schools’

Public schools may as well bid goodbye to honor rolls and star sections this school year following the latest Department of Education (DepEd) directive raising the passing mark for academics.

This on top of the specter that only a handful will be able to move on to the next level of education with many students barely able to make the new 75 percent cut to pass their subjects.

Benjie Valbuena, president of the 11,500-strong Manila Public School Teachers Association (MPSTA), said that because DepEd Memorandum Order Nos. 79 and 82 forbade the use of transmutation tables in computing grades effective last October, students in public schools have failed to reach the 90 percent mark.

In Manila’s public schools, Valbuena said that their previous honor students were only able to garner grades from 78 to 79 percent.

This led to the decimation of star sections, he said.

The MPSTA and the Alliance of Concerned Teachers yesterday held a conference where ACT sounded a call for public school teachers to defy the DepEd orders laying down the new "tougher" grading system which set the passing grade in all tests, quizzes and examinations at a strict 75 percent.

ACT has been vigorously opposing DepEd orders 79 and 82 issued by Secretary Edilberto de Jesus last October, saying public school teachers are also sure to suffer since the new standards will endanger their productivity pay.

Teachers’ productivity pay is based on the performance rating they garner for every grading period or quarter. The rating is computed based on the number of students they pass.

ACT and MPSTA warned that at least 90 percent of the 17 billion public school students will flunk the school year if the new grading system is not recalled.

The new system forbade the use of transmutation tables in computing grades of students, where the passing mark is actually set at 50 percent –even lower in some public schools –because of the addition of a certain number of points to the raw score.

ACT secretary-general Raymund Villanueva had earlier cited the case of some 260 students of five Math sections at the Quirino High School in Project 3, Quezon City, where only one student passed in the third grading period last January.

Villanueva said this situation was not unique to Quirino High, rather there were similar massive failures in other public schools across the country.

ACT said it was unfair for the DepEd to implement a tougher standard in the wake of problems besetting the public school system due to shortage of teachers, lack of classrooms, chairs, desks and textbooks.

Villanueva had painted a dark scenario for the next school year if millions of flunkers or repeaters reenroll in the elementary and high school levels.

He said this will worsen the problem of already crowded conditions in classrooms and schools if the new grading system is not recalled by the government.