No excuses for 'promdis' higher NAT results

Few days ago, we read about the performance of the students coming from Cebu City public schools in the National Achievement Tests. As the results were bared, Cebu City's best efforts were woeful. Compared to the achievements of those who do not enjoy daily the amenities of urban life, the learning of our students seemed to approximate alarming, if not tragic, scales. Take, for instance, the mark reached by our pride, the Cebu City National Science High School. While apparently registering the best scores among Cebu City schools, its over-all performance was nowhere near the top where we expected it to be. Some barangay schools promdi the province (no offense intended) beat it to loftier standings.

Honestly, the comparably lower scores obtained by our pupils did not bother me much. I thought, preparations, be it in sports or in written examinations would really matter. I could accept the possibility that those schools in the city outskirts prepared more intensively. The administrators, teachers and students there probably took the tests to heart for which reason they might have meant to do better. With lesser distractions, they could have been more focused.

It was also probable that the students living outside of Cebu City whose batch took the NAT together with our own, had, aside from the better preparations, higher intelligence quotient. It would be without basis to claim that city students, ours, are brighter than those residing in the province. If my information were correct, the nature of the tests was targeted to range the scales of learning the students achieved. Believing that the more intelligent ones would assimilate deeper than those less endowed, the tests just naturally showed the learning curves.

Really, I was bothered more by the reaction of our education leaders. It was obvious that they wanted to justify our schools' sub-par performance and in the process, avoid the heat. By their apparent justification, they only betrayed their own shallowness. Just as woeful as the performance of our students, the pronouncements made by our officials littered with grave innuendoes. It was highly irresponsible for Sir Joy Augustus Young to claim that it was incredible for pupils in the province to fare better than those residing in our midst. He meant that because it was unbelievable for promdi students to obtain higher scores than city-bred ones, the former must have cheated. How pathetic! If I were to follow his skewed thinking, Did Sir Joy really believe that his city upbringing would make him more intelligent than say a school head teacher in a god-forsaken part of the province? Perhaps, such a head teacher had garnered academic credentials (useful to his position) far superior to Sir Joy's.

The office of Sir Joy as Cebu City education consultant is not a license to hint that teachers and students from outside Cebu City committed such immoral act as cheating in the tests. Neither is it an excuse for him to propose, as he did, that Cebu City should conduct its own test in the hope that it would show the performance of our students. His proposal is going to be a very expensive way of wasting meager public funds. Such a plan, if carried, would never prove cheating, if at all, by anybody. There would be no basis of comparison. How could Sir Joy ever conclude that the provincianos cheated by the results of an entirely different test given only to Cebu City students?

Indeed, Sir Joy's position should not be waved with arrogance. It should be used responsibly. With his direct access to his honor, Mayor Tomas R. Osmeña, he can instead, use the funds which he otherwise intends for another test, to retool our teachers, enhance their skills and make their environment more conducive to learning. There are so many things that need to be done. But, alas, only the imaginative minds of a head teacher can envision these.

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