UNTIL a complaint is filed against the Cebu Provincial School Board (PSB), public schools in 44 towns under the Provincial Schools Division will resume using English as a medium of instruction in the next school year.
Likewise, public schools are advised to focus on academics by refraining from conducting off-site extra-curricular activities.
Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia, who sits as co-chairperson of the PSB, said the moves are offshoots of the Philippines’ “dismal and embarrassing” rating in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa).
Conducted every three years since 2000, Pisa is a worldwide study intended to evaluate educational systems by measuring 15-year-old school pupils’ scholastic performance on mathematics, science and reading.
Confused studentry
The Philippines scored the lowest in reading comprehension, the main subject assessed, out of 79 participating countries. It also placed the second lowest in math and science.
“We really don’t need to analyze this like this one is some rocket science. The truth of the matter here is, first of all, we have a very confused studentry,” Garcia said on Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2019.
For this school year, there are at least 550,000 students enrolled in the 1,177 public schools under the Provincial Schools Division.
These schools are implementing the Mother Tongue-Based Multi-Lingual Education (MTB-MLE) program of the Department of Education (DepEd).
One of the changes in basic education curriculum brought about by the K-12 program is the introduction of the MTB-MLE, wherein seven of the 12 major local languages in the country are used as medium of instruction, specifically for kindergarten and Grades 1 to 3 pupils.
A K-12 curriculum guide for Grades 1 to 3 published by the DepEd in May 2016, said the MTB-MLE’s goal is to make Filipino children lifelong learners who are “more than prepared to develop the competencies in the different learning areas.”
“This will serve as their passport to enter and achieve well in the mainstream educational system and in the end, contribute productively to their community and to the larger society as well as multilingual, multi-literate, and multi-cultural citizens of the country,” read a portion of MTB-MLE’s goals.
But instead of developing multifaceted pupils, Garcia fears that the program may be creating confusion.
“Think about it: their first three years of schooling will use mother tongue, Grades 4 to 6 use Tagalog, and Grades 7 and up use English... Why should we worry about our kids not learning about their mother tongue when it’s our spoken language at home?” Garcia said.
She continued: “It’s obvious that we have a very confused studentry who are not learning anything. Why did we reinvent the wheel? There was nothing wrong with it. We were able to produce brilliant graduates when the medium of instruction was English. It did not make us any less Filipinos. It did not make us any less nationalistic.”
The governor lamented that like Spanish and Japanese languages, Cebuano and Tagalog should be made elective subjects in tertiary schools instead of using them as medium of instruction for basic education.
False sense of nationalism
“Sometimes, it is a false sense of nationalism where we insist that we must be speaking either in the mother tongue or in Tagalog, which they call Filipino. What is its impact on the lives of the students? I fear for the future of this province if this is the quality of students we are producing. What kind of leaders will we have in the future when we have students who cannot perform academically?” Garcia said.
The governor said the public and educators must “go back to the basics.”
“I turned out pretty well. Am I less nationalistic, ‘un-Cebuano’ because I wasn’t taught in Cebuano in grade school? We were always taught in English, but I don’t think anyone can challenge my love for Cebu. What point were they trying to make here? To produce Cebuano-loving students? I don’t think so. The mother tongue is learned at home,” she said.
In its last meeting for 2019 held at the Capitol on Dec. 13, the PSB passed two separate resolutions in response to the Pisa results.
Liloan Mayor Christina Garcia-Frasco moved for a moratorium on the use of Cebuano and Filipino in teaching the core subjects beginning June 2020.
Frasco, who is also president of the League of Municipalities in the Philippines local chapter, also moved for the academics to be prioritized by schools over off-campus activities.
Confining extra-curricular activities in schools was also one of the PSB’s ways to avoid the Boljoon tragedy that killed seven elementary pupils who were on their way to a sports meet aboard a dump truck last July.
The school division was advised to invite talent scouts instead of holding sports meets to prevent untoward incidents.
Provincial Schools Division Superintendent Marilyn Andales, for her part, said she will report the PSB’s measures to the DepEd regional and Central Office.
Mother tongue program
However, the DepEd 7 would continue implementing its MTB-MLE program. It would only stop if there is a written order or memorandum from its central office.
Salustiano Jimenez, DepEd 7 officer-in-charge, said he appreciated the efforts and concerns of the Cebu Provincial Government to provide quality education to learners. But his office could not change the curriculum nor the medium of instruction if there is no order from his superiors.
He said the central office could consider the resolution from the PSB.
If the PSB will endorse its resolution to the DepEd 7, Jimenez said he is willing to endorse it to the central office. He said it’s up to Education Secretary Leonor Briones to decide.
Jimenez also believed that the PSB’s move comes just “in time,” especially since the DepEd recently launched its “Sulong EduKalidad,” the department’s national reform plan to raise the quality of education.
He said the Sulong EduKalidad reform will provide an avenue for the review of the K-12 curriculum and its implementation.
Jimenez urged the public not to worry too much about the recent Pisa result.
He said the country’s Pisa ranking, particularly on the reading comprehension part, had many underlying factors, including the way the test was administered.
“It was the first time we joined. Perhaps our confidence level when we took the exam was not that high. It was a different examination, and our children are not used to the kind of examination that is computer aided,” he said in a mix of Cebuano and English.
Jimenez believed that the young pupils could comprehend but that they possibly failed to finish the Pisa examination as it was new to them.
Only two schools in Cebu City were among the participants of the exam. One school, due to its lack of computer equipment, had to use the equipment from other schools so its pupul could join the exam, said Jimenez.
Jimenez said it is unfair to correlate the Pisa result with the mother tongue-based curriculum because the participants of the Pisa exam were 15-year-old students who were not products of the said curriculum.
The DepEd, said Jimenez, is doing something “to move forward” and reform the educational system in the country. (RTF, WBS)