DepEd Says Preparing for 2022 Global Learning Assessment Following Depressing PH Rating

MANILA – The Department of Education (DepEd) said on Thursday it formed a technical working group (TWG) to prepare Filipino teachers and students who would participate in an upcoming international learning assessment, where the country previously performed poorly.

At a virtual press conference, the Undersecretary of Education, Nepomuceno Malaluan, announced that the country will participate in the next Program for the Evaluation of International Students (PISA), scheduled for 2022.

“Our decision is to continue participating in PISA. We now have the 2018 PISA results benchmark and we want to see if our interventions are working,” Malaluan said.

“We have created a technical working group for large-scale international assessments. These have been meeting constantly,” he said.

Filipino students scored the worst among 79 countries in reading comprehension and the second lowest in math and science literacy in PISA 2018, which was also the first time the country participated in the assessment.

The PISA, conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), is a computerized test that measures the performance of 15-year-old students in math, science, and reading.

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Preparing for PISA

Abigail Alviz, a member of DepEd’s TWG for Large-Scale International Assessments, said the department and its partners were providing online training for teachers and school leaders on PISA.

The training also includes a literacy course that aims to equip teachers with assessment strategies and methods to improve students’ reading proficiency, he said.

Alviz said his team also developed learning materials and practice tests with “PISA level questions” that would be uploaded to a learning management platform, where students can access and answer them.

“There are items published for PISA by the OECD … and we are maximizing their use because this is where we anchor our PISA level questions and they will become interactive materials,” he said.

Sucalit: Almost 50 percent of the PISA science items were answered incorrectly by more than 80 percent of the students. Approximately 17 percent of the science items in PISA were skipped by more than 10 percent of students pic.twitter.com/3gSl4JfIEt

– María Arra Pérez (@arraperezDZMM) November 26, 2020

DepEd and its partners have also analyzed the PISA 2018 results. For example, the Office of Education Evaluation reviewed items from PISA that Filipino students answered incorrectly or found it difficult to answer.

Malaluan said the department’s action on PISA will produce “some positive results.”

Marilou Balagtas, a professor at the Philippine Normal University who studied the PISA 2018 results, said the country should continue to participate in international evaluations to see the “effectiveness” of the basic education curriculum.

“Participating in PISA would be a good way to know if we are really getting into our intention to produce competitive students globally,” he said.

In 2019, DepEd changed its policy from increasing enrollment figures to improving the quality of education through the “Sulong Edukalidad” campaign.

This year, DepEd implemented a revised basic education curriculum after revision, reducing the number of learning competencies to the “most essential” for students.