On June 21, 2021 the World Bank released a report assessing the state of education in the Philippines. Overall the report was bleak and concluded that 80% of Filipino students in grades 4-9 did not meet basic skills levels for their grade. Naturally the Department of Education was furious saying that the report shamed the nation by using old data to paint an inaccurate picture and that the World Bank broke protocol by not notifying the DepEd before the report was released. An apology was demanded and the World Bank acquiesced.
President Duterte welcomed the apology.
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| https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1458818/duterte-welcomes-world-banks-apology-expects-more-accurate-report |
President Rodrigo Duterte has welcomed the World Bank’s apology over the early publication of its assessment on the sorry state of Philippine education, expressing hope the financial institution would soon publish a “more accurate” report.
“I would not want to begrudge the World Bank. These international bodies working on the problems of the world should be very careful about their statistics. It is not good to commit a wrong internationally. But we welcome their apology,” Duterte said in his taped weekly briefing that aired Monday night.
The president said the Department of Education (DepEd) would do what it could to correct misconceptions about Filipino students’ performance.
“I commend [DepEd] Secretary Leonor Briones for calling out the World Bank on this issue. I hope a more accurate report based on the latest data will be made,” Duterte said.
It's not clear how much more accurate a report can be made than one which was made from the latest data. In fact the World Bank did not apologize over the data they used but over the technicality of not informing the DepEd before it was released.
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| https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2021/07/08/world-bank-philippines-on-education-report-july-8-2021 |
We deeply regret that the report on education was inadvertently published earlier than scheduled and before the Department of Education had enough chance to provide inputs. This was an oversight on our part, and we conveyed our personal apologies in our communication with the government. Recognizing the inadvertent release of the report, we have taken steps to temporarily remove it from the website. We are aware of the Department’s various efforts and programs to address the challenge of education quality. We agree with the Department that the issue of quality has a long historical context, and support its demonstrated commitment to resolve it decisively. We have reached out to Secretary Briones on this matter and look forward to continuing our dialogue with the Department of Education on the opportunities and challenges in the education sector.
There is nothing in this apology "deeply regretting" the statistics used to compile the report or the report's conclusions. Since the report has now been scrubbed from the internet we can only rely on what others have written about it.
The World Bank report, dated June 21, is available on the World Bank Philippines web page, both in its 86-page complete form and in a user-friendly, presentation format. The report clearly states, in the first two paragraphs of its introduction, what its basis and objective is: It is a synthesis of results from the most recent (2018 and 2019) rounds of three international education assessments in which the Philippines has participated. These are the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which the Philippines took part in for the first time in 2018; the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (Timss) in 2019, which the Philippines hasn't participated in since 2003; and the Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics (SEA-PLM) in 2019, which was the first and so far, only time that assessment has been conducted. Far from being "old data," the data specified by the report is the newest data available, and its synthesis of the results of those three assessments "represent the pre-Covid baseline," the report explains.
The picture it paints of the state of Philippine education is shockingly dark. Overall, about 80 percent of Filipino students in Grades 4 through 9 "are unable to meet learning standards expected for their grade."
This is not the opinion of the World Bank researchers but the unalloyed scores of the three assessments. In reading, 90 percent of Grade 5 students in the SEA-PLM and 81 percent of Grade 9 students in the PISA were "below minimum proficiency." In mathematics, the "below minimum proficiency" levels were 81 percent for Grade 4 students in the Timss, 83 percent for Grade 5 students in the SEA-PLM, and 81 percent for Grade 9 students in the PISA. In science, 87 percent of Grade 4 students in the Timss assessment were below the minimum standard, as were 78 percent of Grade 9 students in the PISA.
https://www.manilatimes.net/2021/07/08/opinion/columns/briones-is-an-embarrassment/1806126
DepEd Secretary Briones complianed that the data from 2019 was old and therefore outdated but the World Bank says it is the latest available information. Briones completely misrepresents the World Bank when she writes:
The use of 2019 old PISA data was admitted by the Senior Economist of the World Bank in a note to an Undersecretary of Education, thus: “Please know that the full report contents are derived from published PISA scores and I hope this can be useful in your response to those asking questions, these are not new findings but data that have been previously published when PISA was published.”
The World Bank admits to one error: the release of old data based on 2019 PISA scores to the public without informing DepEd. Thus, DepEd and the Philippine government were subjected to public censure and criticism. Even if done inadvertently, the World Bank has inflicted harm on DepEd and the government.
The use of this data was not an error nor did the World Bank admit it was such but rather they only admitted they erred in not informing the DepEd of the report before its publication. Perhaps Briones should apologize to the World Bank for her blatant mischaracterization of both the report and the apology. She also laments that the World Bank neglected the historical context of education in the Philippines.
The report also lacked historical context. The quality of education, at all levels, is a product of a long historical process. The World Bank itself is a party to this historical evolution, being a lender for major reform programs, such as the USD100 million Program for Decentralized Educational Development (PRODED) from 1981 to 1986, the USD113 million Third Elementary Education Project (TEEDP) from 1997 to 2006, the USD200 million National Program Support for Basic Education (NPSBE) from 2006 to 2011, and more recently, the USD300 million Learning Equity and Accountability Program Support (LEAPS) from 2014 to 2018. Giving a snapshot of the current situation without its historical context can easily give the impression that it is the present administration that is to blame, and not mentioning current initiatives can further give the impression that we are not doing anything about it.
Acquiescing to the demand of two senior members of President Duterte’s Cabinet, the World Bank (WB) has publicly apologized for the publication of its report highlighting the sorry state of Philippine education.
But the Washington-based multilateral lender did not retract its findings that indicated “a crisis in education” and that are based on the latest global assessments in which the Philippines took part before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, a report of the Tokyo-based think tank Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) also lamented the “low” amount of learning—especially in mathematics when taught in local dialects—in the Philippines, despite gains from the K-12 basic education program since 2012, which narrowed the reading skills gap between students in rich and poor households.
ADBI said that “considering the Philippines’ status as a low-middle-income country, improving the quality of the education system must remain a matter of national priority.”
ADBI cited the same problems in the Philippines’ education sector.
It based its working paper titled “Foundational Mathematics and Reading Skills of Filipino Students Over a Generation” on the results of the Functional Literacy, Education, Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS), a national household survey that the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) had been conducting nationwide every five years since 1998.
The FLEMMS microdata collected by the PSA in 2003, 2013 and 2019 and that were used by the ADBI paper showed that “the share of students with foundational skills increases between grades, indicating that schooling improves learning,” specifically referring to math and reading skills.
“However, we find that a substantial share of Grade 10 students still do not have foundational mathematics or reading skills. This shows that like many countries, the amount of learning produced for each year of schooling in the Philippines is very low,” ADBI said.
It said the FLEMMS-based math learning profile showed a decline of 5 percentage points in 2019 from 2013 levels. “Among Grade 10 students, 93 percent of students in the 2013 cohort answered the mathematics questions correctly. In 2019, the share was 88 percent,” ADBI noted.
It said the decline “corroborated the TIMSS results.” But “different from TIMSS, … we determined that the decline between 2013 and 2019 was four times as severe compared to the decline between 2003 and 2013,” ADBI said, referring to the math results.
This paper from the Asian Development Bank Institute was based on the PSA's own data which it has been collecting every five years since 1998. The results show that "the amount of learning produced for each year of schooling in the Philippines is very low." This paper appears to have been scrubbed from the web but a web cache shows the abstract which is as follows:
Children around the world largely rely on the formal educational system to teach them foundational mathematics and reading skills. The inability of an educational system to do so may indicate it has structural constraints. In this paper, we take advantage of three rounds of a nationally representative household survey on education and functional literacy implemented by the Philippine Statistics Authority to examine mastery of foundational mathematics and reading skills among students in grades 4–10 students. The three rounds enable us to examine trends in these skills from the turn of the millennium to 2019. We find that a significant proportion of higher-grade students have not yet mastered these foundational skills. We also find that the difference in foundational skills between grade 10 and grade 4 students is small. Based on a comparison between cohorts, we find that foundational mathematics skills continued to decline between the 2003 and 2019 cohorts. Foundational reading skills, however, trended up between 2013 and 2019 after stagnating between 2003 and 2013. The latter is suggestive evidence that major educational reforms implemented by the Philippine government since 2012 may have successfully improved reading skills but not mathematics skills. Overall, the Philippine basic education system, building on its success in increasing access to education for virtually all children, still has ample room to significantly improve its effectiveness.
Math skills have decreased while reading skills have slightly increased. But overall there is ample room for improvement. After all, there is not much difference between the foundational skills of a 10th grader and a 4th grader.
This paper takes into account the historical context of which Briones says is necessary to understand the Philippine education system. Over two decades the Philippines has not seen much improvement in the education system. Filipino students remain behind their peers. One has to ask why. Why, after all the programs implemented and money spent on improving the education system, do Filipinos lag behind the rest of the world? That is not a question I am going to answer but it is a problem the DepEd must solve. Otherwise the DepEd will only continue to inflict harm on Filipino children by giving them a worthless education. Too bad the government prefers to huff and puff in a vain effort to save face before the international community. Everyone can see the egg on this country's face.
With enough education the PH could be another S. Korea or Vietnam. Imagine a nation where most grown adults wouldn't have to flee the country just to take a lousy job since there were excellent jobs galore where they are already from?
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