During the National Learning Camp (NLC) this summer, members of the Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom II) encountered mass promotion products and at the start of SY 2024-2025, they learned that participants who failed in the intervention activity were promoted to the next grade.
In the Edcom II press release “EDCOM 2 to DepEd: Implement effective learning intervention recovery program for K-12 learners” dated July 23, 2024, Commissioner Jose Francisco Benitez recounted: “We have observed that learners are not only catching up for proficiencies of their current grade level but are also lacking the proficiencies of earlier grade levels.”
The press statement “DepEd commits to submit plan for learning recovery in two weeks” dated July 30, 2024 quoted executive director Karol Mark Yee relating that the Grade 8 students who they saw were still struggling with subtraction at the end of the NLC were promoted to Grade 9.
In the press statement “National learning recovery program in need of massive reform – Gatchalian” dated Aug. 7, 2024, Yee had asked, “What are DepEd’s plans for the learners who are at Grades 9 and 10, but without foundational numeracy and literacy?”
During the Senate hearing on basic education on Aug. 7, 2024, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, Edcom II co-chairperson, made the following observations: Grade 8 students enrolled in the intervention program of the NLC were taught basic addition and subtraction; more than half of the students failed the program but they still proceeded to “Grade 8 or Grade 9.”
But even after seeing it unfold right before their very eyes, Edcom II officials continue to absurdly turn a blind eye to the mass promotion practice of the Department of Education.
When asked during the Aug. 17, 2024 episode of the “Top Story” program on ANC if the failure of schools to uphold their learning standards factored in the country’s 5.5 years learning gap, Yee dodged and resorted to a non-sequitur. He claimed the overloading of teachers with non-teaching tasks, the lack of training of teachers on the subjects they teach and bullying are causing the learning gap.
The factors Yee cited cannot be used to justify the repeated promotion of learners who do not meet the academic requirements. Too, his explanation is debunked by the fact that although a class shares the same teacher, more than half the class are at grade level at end of the school year and only a minority are left behind.
Last July, the Edcom II concluded that the NLC failed because attendance was voluntary, allowing many students who needed the intervention to skip it. They proposed that the program be made mandatory so that all targeted students will participate (“2 weeks does not solve 6 years of learning loss – EDCOM 2 Commissioner Benitez,” Edcom II press release, July 19, 2024). But they could not even put two and two together that what they stumbled upon is the entire explanation for the learning crisis: the mass promotion practice has made learning voluntary, thus only the learners who value education actually learn. Neither did they realize that the solution they proposed to make the NLC effective is the same solution for the learning crisis: make learning mandatory by strictly enforcing the learning standards and by uprooting the mass promotion practice.
It was a no brainer for the 90 percent of the students who required intervention not to show up in the NLC (Edcom II Aug. 7, 2024 press release) because although aware they are way behind in competencies and the NLC is a chance to do some catching up, they know they will be promoted to the next grade anyway even if they do not attend. That is the same mindset holding sway among a significant portion of the public school studentry during the school year with the same results as in the NLC.
But the obvious is too profound for the Edcom II officials, who apparently have successfully convinced themselves that the country’s derailed basic education can be put back on track even while DepEd continues to mindlessly swamp the elementary and secondary levels with millions of non-readers and non-numerates. – Estanislao C. Albano Jr., casigayan@yahoo.com