MANILA, Philippines – How could the Department of Education (DepEd) start its learning programs without basic data on the actual number of students who needed help?

This was among the questions posed by senators on Wednesday, August 7, as they quizzed the DepEd over its programs that are supposed to help the country recover from its learning crisis.

“We know that we have a problem, but we don’t know the gravity of this problem. In the universe of 1.7 million, how many of those need intervention programs? So that we can advise you, we can allocate more funds to boost the intervention program,” a disappointed Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, chairman of the basic education committee, told DepEd officials.

Gatchalian was referring to the DepEd’s National Learning Recovery Program (NLRP), which was designed to help strengthen the learning recovery. NLRP consists of the National Learning Camp, the National Reading Program, the National Mathematics Program, the National Science and Technology Program, and other programs implemented by the central office and field offices.

EDCOM 2 Executive Director Karol Mark Yee also expressed disappointment over the lack of basic data on low-performing students. He said that he has been requesting for this dataset from the DepEd to no avail.

“We don’t understand why it seems to be difficult to share this information when they can easily share all the other data points. This was the basis for the targeting that should have attended, and is critical in helping us understand the type of learning recovery programs needed by our students,” Yee said.

Senator Nancy Binay questioned the DepEd over why students were able to get promoted to a higher grade level without being proficient on basic arithmetic.

“Paano tayo umabot sa ganitong sitwasyon na nakarating ng Grade 8 pero hindi marunong mag add (How did we end up in a situation where someone reaches Grade 8 but still doesn’t know how to add?),” Binay rhetorically asked. (READ: DepEd: 99% of students got passing marks because teachers were ‘considerate’)

Status of Catch-up Fridays

Even the Catch-up Fridays, which dedicates every Friday of the school year to reading, values, peace, and health education, seems to be not being implemented well.

Yee said the said program was “not structured to optimize learning recovery,”

“Teachers complained about the lack of training, the lack of lesson guides, and the lack of learning resources on the ground and also that it did not use targeting, there was no real grouping by ability, which are really the effective mechanisms to ensure learning recovery,” Yee added.

Teachers’ groups have been asking the DepEd to halt Catch-up Fridays, but the department said that they should wait for policy guidelines regarding implementation.

“There’s no explicit yes or no, but wait for policy issuance. This is causing confusion on the ground,” Yee said.

Matatag curriculum

The “chaotic” implementation of the Matatag curriculum was also pointed out by resource persons during the hearing.

Two programs of the new curriculum – the National Mathematics Program (NMP) and the National Reading Program (NRP) – caused confusion among teachers because of the lack of clear guidelines on how they are supposed to be implemented.

“I just want to highlight that concern, because on the ground, a lot of teachers are now thinking that they are forced to include this 30-minute [NMP], 30-minute [NRP] each day and really don’t have explicit guidance from the department yet as to how it should be implemented,” Yee said.

DepEd Order 10 states that NMP and NRP should be done four times a week for 30 minutes each. However, DepEd Director Leila Areola said that the DepEd is currently tweaking the policy, and that the guidelines on NMP and NRP were mistakenly printed and included on the order released to teachers.

“Some provisions of the NMP and NRP were included in the Matatag policy… However, because of some tweaking, some adjustments, the calibrations, we have to take that out. Unfortunately, I was not able to take that out from the schedule,” Areola admitted.

Newly minted DepEd Secretary Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara said that he is open to tweaking the learning programs.

“Makikinig tayo sa ating chairpersons in the Senate, in the House dahil mga dalubhasa ‘yan (We will listen to our chairpersons in the Senate, in the House because they are experts),” said Angara, whose appointment was just confirmed by the Commission on Appointments on Wednesday.

The DepEd crafted the learning recovery programs in 2023 under the leadership of Vice President Sara Duterte, who resigned as education secretary on June 19. Duterte admitted the she left DepEd with unfinished business. – Rappler.com