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Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Teachers’ colleges willing to improve quality
By Linette C. Ramos
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
Despite the criticisms and embarrassment they drew from the mayor, teacher education institutions are willing to work with the Cebu City Government in improving the quality of education graduates.
The deans of education of various schools in the city assured they will enhance their curriculum to respond to the challenge of Mayor Tomas Osmeña to produce quality teachers, even if some of them doubt the results.
In one university, students will be exposed to actual teaching jobs in the barrios as early as second year to strengthen their commitment to the profession.
The results of the tests, which were revealed by the mayor to local education officials and the media last Monday, do not reflect the quality of education of the schools since only a few of their graduates took the test, some of them said.
“If it’s true that our graduates did not qualify, then we will do our best from now on. The results will be a challenge to us to continue to improve our training, although it does not mean that if a few graduates did not qualify, the quality of our training is already poor,” said Professor Delayta Polenar of Southwestern University (SWU).
None of the 35 applicants who graduated from SWU were accepted to teach in the city.
For her part, University of San Jose-Recoletos (USJ-R) education dean Alma Ang said she would like to ask for a list of the applicants to make sure the ones who applied are really their graduates.
Ang said some college deans doubt the result of the tests because as far as they know, most of their students landed jobs immediately after graduation.
“This is an eye-opener for all of us, but I feel it was not right for the mayor to say that the schools’ performance is poor based on the results of their tests. It was a sweeping conclusion,” she told Sun.Star Cebu.
Even if they were dismayed by the results of the tests taken by some of their graduates when they applied with the City, education professors said they will just use the results of the study as a challenge to improve their training.
Slim pickings
Only 92 of the 1,162 teacher applicants from various teacher education institutions in Cebu and other provinces were accepted for teaching jobs with the Cebu City Schools Division.
The teacher applicants were ranked according to their performance in teaching aptitude tests, IQ tests, teaching demonstration, psychological test and oral interview.
In an interview yesterday, City Schools Superintendent Leonilo Oliva said the teacher education institutions should improve their training in communication.
“We also observed that the new graduates are not committed to teaching and some of them lack values. Some have high IQ but their inclination towards teaching is very low. The schools should address this by enhancing their curriculum,” he said.
Oliva also noted that some teachers have already been teaching for more than 20 years but are not qualified to teach.
One applicant taught for 27 years but she barely qualified to teach in the city, with a total score of only 62 percent.
The schools division set the passing mark at 60 percent.
(August 31, 2005 issue)
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