DepEd sets Fridays for mastering reading, critical thinking

MANILA, Philippines — Starting next year, Fridays in all public schools will be spent mastering reading and critical thinking as part of the Department of Education’s measure to improve the quality of learning, according to Vice President and DepEd Secretary Sara Duterte.

During the culmination event of the national reading month in Quezon City yesterday, Duterte announced that the DepEd was already crafting the policy for the “Catch-up Friday” measure in all public schools so that it could be implemented by Jan. 12, 2024.

Under the program, regular lessons will be delivered from Monday to Thursday, but Fridays will be dedicated to students catching up on mastery of reading, critical thinking and writing.

Duterte said this policy seeks to help “non-readers and slow readers.”

Meanwhile, students with normal to advanced reading comprehension skills will be trained in critically analyzing reading materials and writing their own outputs, such as books and essays.

“The DepEd, particularly its curriculum and teaching strand, discussed this, and we decided that we needed to allot one day per week, when students and teachers will do nothing but catch up with what students need to master,” Duterte told reporters in Filipino.

“This is our strategy to catch up as part of our learning recovery program because even as we’ve done all we can in the past, we could not improve the performance of our learners,” she added.

The Vice President emphasized that the DepEd’s curriculum and teaching strand needs to devise a uniform lesson delivery plan that allows students to have regular lessons despite one less day of traditional learning.

“We have all the data and the opinion of international experts. They all (indicate) that the quality of our education is not good and we need to start helping our kids learn how to read,” she said.

The revamp will be the second that the DepEd had devised, the first being overhauling the K-12 program and replacing it with the revised Grade 1-10 curriculum dubbed “Matatag.”

While teachers’ groups have yet to comment on the pending policy, many critics have been calling for the scrapping of the Matatag curriculum, stressing that the administration should instead consult teachers and experts on how to deal with the inadequacies of current approaches.

Benchmarked on the “decongestion” of learning competencies, such as reducing subjects in the early grade levels to focus on foundational skills such as oracy and numeracy, the Matatag curriculum intends to improve students’ learning outcomes and help them succeed.

After the pilot tests this school year, the new curriculum will be implemented in phases, first in preschool and Grades 1, 4 and 7 in all public and private schools starting School Year 2024-2025; Grades 2, 5 and 8 in SY 2025-2026; Grades 3, 7 and 8 in SY 2026-2027 and Grade 10 in SY 2027-2028.