One interesting observation regarding secondary level education in the Philippines is that there seem to be more honor students these days. However, that does not jive with the results of the recent Functional Literacy, Education, and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS) done by the Philippine Statistics Authority has found that 18.9 million Filipinos who completed secondary education between 2019 and 2024 may be considered “functional illiterate” or students who can read, write, and compute but could not comprehend what they read.
One logical explanation for the apparent rise in honor students and the drop in literacy, which at first blush seem to be contradictory in nature, could be the lowering of standards for Filipino students. We have more honor students not because our students are doing better, but because the system is making it easier to be “excellent.” This could be caused by school administrations that think it is good for them if the parents and guardians are appeased with more honor students, or a system that makes it difficult for teachers to give honest grades because by doing so, they’d have to deal with the backlash and questions of the helicopter parents who cannot accept that they are raising dumb kids.
Another major factor would be the practice within the Department of Education to make sure “no child is left behind” which started out as a noble goal but given our tendency to cut corners and focus on compliance rather than outcomes, it has become slang for “nobody will fail in this country’s educational system, even if they deserve it.”
Such policies have made it difficult for teachers to give their wards failing grades or make the latter repeat the year because doing so entails more work. If failures make a teacher’s record look bad, there will be no child left behind and everyone will move on to the next grade. Whether the learner deserves to move up, or have met the requirements for the grade, is no longer the teacher’s problem. It becomes the next teacher’s problem, which happens for 12 years until the graduate becomes society’s problem. That would certainly explain why a significant chunk of our graduates are functional illiterates.
The problem with the en masse lowering of standards is that it affects more than just the tail end of the classroom, but tends to infect the entire class and even school as well. After all, why stop at nobody can fail when everybody can be an honor student, with teachers not needing to put in the effort to produce proper graduates and deserving honor students? Under such a low standard regime, the students are happy, the parents are proud, and the teachers aren’t even stressed out because all they need to do is put in the minimal effort and the school administration won’t even bother them. The only problem is the quality of the graduates produced but that’s no longer a DepEd problem anymore, right?
It is interesting to see that even in private schools, where failures and repeating grade levels make business sense (2x the tuition), the number of honor students seems to be on the rise as well. Are students there actually doing better or are standards also slipping to make more parents happy? Is making “excellence” easier to achieve, ensuring customer satisfaction, a viable marketing or retention strategy for such schools as well?
The number or percentage of graduates that are functional illiterates should be a damning metric for any school, public or private; mostly because such students should never be allowed to graduate in the first place. Since the biggest share of the national budget is supposed to be on education, aren’t we wasting billions of pesos on funding an educational system where almost 20 percent of its output are practically, or functionally rejects? Or will our public officials tell us to look at the bright side and be happy that at least they are functional, and not totally illiterate?
This country drastically needs education reform, if our future is going to be better. Unfortunately for the Philippines, it would seem that political dynasties prefer their population to be as dumb as possible, because if Filipinos smartened up and started thinking critically, they might become the first casualties. Our educational system needs to produce better graduates who are given an education that is relevant with the changing times. With artificial intelligence and automation threatening the workforce, we will need workers and employees that are more than just laborers, especially if we intend to compete with the more developed economies.
Given our current status where our school system is producing functional illiterates, it is pretty darn obvious that our education officials still have a long way to go. Hopefully they have the vision and the determination to see through the necessary educational reforms that our country and its people desperately need.*
