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EDUC 111

Current Issues and Trends in Philippine Education

ACTIVTY 3

July 28, 2020

Prepared by

SYRILE T. MANGUDANG

Submitted to:

Prof. Crystalyn E. Galindo

TOPICS

2. Problems

3. Problems in Philippine Education

3.1 Poverty in the Classrooms

How Does Poverty Influence Learning? Poverty-related factors that

intervene in students' ability to learn include health and well-being, limited literacy and

language development, access to material resources, and level of mobility. Poverty is an

issue that more and more of our nation's children are coming face to face with. The price

that children of poverty must pay is unbelievably high. Each year, increasing numbers of

children are entering schools with needs from circumstances, such as poverty, that

schools are not prepared to meet.

The term at-risk refers to children who are likely to fail in school or in life because

of their life's social circumstances. It does not appear that any one single factor places a

child at-risk. Rather, when more than one factor is present, there is a compounding effect

and the likelihood for failure increases significantly. Poverty is considered a major at-risk

factor Some of the factors related to poverty that may place a child at-risk for academic

failure are: very young, single or low educational level parents; unemployment; abuse

and neglect; substance abuse; dangerous neighborhoods; homelessness; mobility; and

exposure to inadequate or inappropriate educational experiences.

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Being able to identify and understand children who are at-risk is critical if we are

to support their growth and development. In order to do this, warm and caring

relationships need to be developed between teachers and children. This will enable

teachers to detect any warning signs that may place children at-risk for failure, interfering

with their chances for success in school and life. Academic and behavioral problems can

be indicators of impending failure. Among such behaviors are: delay in language

development, delay in reading development, aggression, violence, social withdrawal,

substance abuse, irregular attendance, and depression. Teachers may have difficulty

reaching a student's parent or guardian. They may also find the student does not

complete assignments, does not study for tests, or does not come to school prepared to

learn because of poverty related circumstances in the home environment. These children

may be unable to concentrate or focus. They may be unwilling or unable to interact with

peers and/or adults in school in an effective manner. These issues not only have an

impact on the learning of the child of poverty but can also impact the learning of other

children.

People in poverty are as diverse as people in any other socioeconomic class. They

present, like other groups, a wide array of values, beliefs, dispositions, experiences,

backgrounds, and life chances. As educators, in order to be responsive to the needs of

our students, it is helpful to consider the constraints that poverty often places on people's
lives, particularly children's, and how such conditions influence learning and academic

achievement. Poverty affects intervening factors that, in turn, affect outcomes for people.

These factors include students' health and well-being; literacy and language

development; access to physical and material resources; and level of mobility.

Possible Solution:

As teachers, these aspects of poverty make planning and preparation absolutely

critical. Content needs to be related in varying ways to meet the needs of the diverse

students in the classroom. We have to consider the cultural values of these children as

we arrange their learning. Constructivism is a key concept in that it respects student

differences and allows students to use their own prior knowledge and experiences to

make connections and learn. It affords students the opportunity to become active learners

by questioning, hypothesizing and drawing conclusions based on their individual learning

experiences. If there is limited foundation for children to draw upon, we need to help them

develop a base of knowledge and experiences so they have somewhere to start.

By providing emotional support, modeling, and other forms of scaffolding, teachers

can help students use their strengths, skills, and knowledge to develop and learn Learning

experiences and problem solving based on real-life problems can help them deal with

some of the issues they may be faced with in their lives. Learning by doing gives students

the opportunity to be active and imaginative problem solvers Thus, diversity actually

presents us with a chance to enhance the quality of education for all our students and

provide them with a variety of opportunities to develop into productive citizens. As our

schools and nation become more diverse, the need for understanding and acceptance of
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differences becomes more important. Our challenge is to provide children with an

effective multicultural education that will foster awareness, respect, and acceptance.

3.2 Mismatch between graduates and the job market

A mismatch between the education system and the labor market is a serious threat

to economic growth and development. This disturbance in the market leads to decreasing

the usefulness of labor and to an improper use of the most important factors of production.

The economy is faced with the problem of inefficient use of the basic resource – human

potential.

Mismatch shows that many college graduates are employed in jobs for which a

degree is not required (over education), and in which the skills they learned in college are

not being fully utilized (over skilling). Policymakers should be particularly concerned about

widespread over skilling, which is likely to be harmful to both the welfare of employees

and the interests of employers as both over education and over skilling can lead to

frustration, lower wages, and higher quitting rates while also being a waste of government

money spent on education.

Job mismatch cases in the Philippines is so common among today’s workforce,

hence more and more employees become restless and frustrated with their current jobs

and career paths.

Here are some of the top reasons, as observed by most career experts, why the

job mismatch issue remains controversial to this very day:

 Wrong choice of college course – either strong parental influence in decision-

making, or taking a course pertaining to a job that is “in” (not because the interest is there)

Being too money-driven – Applying for jobs that offer above-average

compensation packages, like those based abroad, despite not possessing the necessary

skills.

Being too choosy – unreasonable conditions or demands set by jobseekers when

looking for or applying to jobs.

The overqualified stigma – work experiences are beyond employer’s

requirements for the job applied for – a situation that is not new to employees who wish

to switch careers or lower their standards just to avoid unemployment.

Cost-cutting measures of companies for relevant training programs – Not all

employers allot the required time or budget for training new hires, who are therefore

expected to be fast-learners as they go completely hands on as early as day one.

Using connections in the workplace – There are applicants and employees who

consider their relationship with a top-rank person in the organization as an assurance of

securing jobs, while those who are more deserving end up unemployed or victims of

career mismatches themselves.

A labor group has warned that about 1.2 million college and vocation graduates

this year will struggle getting a job due to a growing mismatch between their training and

the job skills required by most employers in the country and overseas. “This job-skills

mismatch crisis in the country has been ongoing and it continues to grow. Competition is

getting higher so employers are putting additional qualifications into the job descriptions,”
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The lack of, or little adjustments in learning institutions to fill the gaps caused by

the heightened competitiveness in the job market has aggravated the problem. “With

employers adding more qualifications, graduates’ credentials will be scrutinized longer.

This additional layer in the procedure could mean additional training, which entails further

cost and perseverance for the applicant while those who fall through the cracks will

become unemployed or underemployed.

Possible solution:

Public policy therefore needs to consider not only the extent and persistence of skill

mismatch, but also the size and persistence of the associated wage effects of such

Persistence if the problem is to be targeted efficiently. Policy attention should focus on

preventing overkilling, particularly when combined with over education, rather than on

over education alone. Furthermore, job recruitment should aim to secure a better match

between skills of new hires and the jobs they fill. Doing so could benefit both employees

and employers by boosting productivity, improving morale, and reducing the quit rate.

 A more flexible labor market through the improvement of labor legislation. Job

security guarantees the quality of work, not the law;

 Promotion of lifelong learning;

  Continuous improvement of programs of professional training of young people and

adults to the extent that they contribute to the reallocation of labor across different

sectors of economy;

 Policy-makers should develop new and upgrade the existing training programs for

those jobs where there is a surplus of demand for labor, and for which labor force

from neighboring countries is predominantly hired;

 Improvement of practical classes at all levels of education, making knowledge

more concrete, development of skills and promotion of the importance of self-

education through entrepreneurial education.

 TESDA acting as a bridge between industries and the local education sector

regarding further training applicable to a wide range of “hot jobs”, career skills

coaching sessions for high school seniors, seminars for school and university

heads and Commission on Higher Education (CHED) officials, career guidance

advocacy activities

3.3 All-time low in global competitiveness rank (PISA, etc.); student retention

ratio; per capita government budget allocation

PISA is the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment. PISA

measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge

and skills to meet real-life challenges.

The OECD researchers explain that the results from a test of 15-year-old children

could not account for all their academic abilities. According to the authors of the PISA

2009 technical manual, student age and curriculum alignment contribute to some of the
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differences in the scores and rankings among countries. This is not only because different

students were assessed but also because the content of the PISA assessment was not

expressly designed to match what students had learned in the preceding school year but

more broadly to assess the cumulative outcome of learning in school up to age 15. For

example, if the curriculum of the grades in which 15- year-olds are enrolled mainly

includes material other than that assessed by PISA (which, in turn, may have been

included in earlier school years) then the observed performance difference will

underestimate student progress. The authors of the PISA technical manual state their

cautions about curriculum alignment and the influence on results. PISA measures

knowledge and skills for life and so it does not have a strong curricular focus. This limits

the extent to which the study is able to explore relationships between differences in

achievement and differences in the implemented curricula. Hardly 21st, century skills. The

PISA ranking or scale score does not provide insights into authentic resilience,

persistence, collaboration, cooperation, cultural awareness, strategizing, empathy,

compassion, or divergent thinking.

PISA Is Unprepared Unfortunately for those who knowingly, or unknowingly,

peddle PISA results to drive education policy, there are no relationships among PISA

rankings or scores and being prepared for employment in multinational corporations or

entrepreneurial activities.
Possible solution: leaders and employees in the global economy must be able to:

 (a) innovate

 (b) collaborate

 and cooperate globally amongst themselves and with their customer bases;

 (c) be creative;

 (d) seek opportunity

 (e) use complexity to a strategic advantage;

 and (f) be communicative

3.4 Malnutrition/poor health among learners; CORONA virus pandemic

Every country in the world is affected by one or more forms of malnutrition.

Combating malnutrition in all its forms is one of the greatest global health challenges. A

challenge for families is the need to help children and young people understand emerging

health risks so that they appreciate the importance of practicing good hygiene and

distancing measures, without causing stress and anxiety. The current epidemic is

characterized with an overload of health information and advice (sometimes conflicting or

misleading) which may cause families to be taking misinformed measures or to be feeling

overwhelmed and confused.

School closure due to COVID-19 is having an impact on the nutrition of many

learners. It is estimated that globally, over 365 million primary school children are missing

out on school meals. For poor households, the loss of school meals means a negative

impact on income and food security. These children are at risk of hunger and will lose the

protection of key vitamins and micronutrients they receive in the school meals, with
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negative impacts on brain development and learning. Moreover, loss of food support in

schools may compound loss of income due to the crisis, and families may resort to

negative coping mechanisms to meet their needs, including child labor or reducing the

number and quality of meals at a time when staying healthy and keeping a strong immune

system is particularly important.

Under the current pandemic and the expected global economic downturn, many

governments are introducing additional measures to address an increased vulnerability

of their population. In order to support schoolchildren during this critical time, any new

design should ensure that the food security and nutrition needs of this age group are

addressed, considering baseline food security and malnutrition situation, gender issues,

social norms influencing food behaviors and socioeconomic vulnerabilities.

Possible solution:

USE AVAILABLE RESOURCES TO SAFEGUARD SCHOOLCHILDREN’S FOOD

SECURITY AND NUTRITION

Different countries have applied a range of options to continue modified school feeding

services as much as possible, often focusing on the most vulnerable. Where specific

large-scale national response to COVID-19 are designed they should ensure that the food
and nutrition. Rapidly assess options available and consult with localities to determine the

most feasible response or setoff responses. When assessing the options consider:

 the level of food security and nutrition of children;

 the feasibility to continue distribution or whether movement is severely restricted;

 the ability to change packaging were needed to ensure food safety; and the

modality of food supply and preparation.

 the functioning of markets and payments services

 the feasibility of developing a mechanism to provide children with micronutrient

supplements for consumption at home under parental supervision (some countries

have established such models to continue supplementation during

vacations/holidays), especially in countries with high prevalence of anemia.

 Maintain, as much as possible, the food supply from smallholder farmers when

contractual arrangements are already in place (see section on homegrown school

feeding below).

 Include foods that are of high nutrition value such as pulses, UHT milk, eggs, fruits

and vegetables.

 Avoid including food products with low nutrition content.

 Promote optimal water, sanitation and hygiene services and ensure optimal

hygiene and other key behaviors of children, teachers and foodservice

staff/volunteers, school canteens and regulation of food vendors.

 Ensure and continue the provision of essential school health and nutrition package

(school feeding, micronutrient supplementation, deworming, malaria prevention

and oral hygiene)

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 Avoid potential deterioration in food safety standards. • Ensure adequate nutrition

content of meals. • Create contingency plans for the distribution of meals/food

baskets in preparation for potential rapid closure of schools

 Emergency food delivery, including micronutrient and ready-to-use therapeutic

food supplements for pregnant women and young children.

 Provide pregnant women/new mothers counselling on health/breastfeeding/care

during COVID-19.

 Use health and nutrition platforms to deliver messages on coping, parenting and

early stimulation

 Promote family handwashing and hygiene, particularly in low-resource

environments

 Provide families with clear and simple health information including age-appropriate

resources that can assist families to educate children about simple health and

hygiene measures. This includes guidance for maintaining a healthy environment

for home learning. Efforts to alert caregivers’ and learners to the existence of ‘fake

news’ and directions to reputable resources is also helpful. Existing resources can

be found via sources such as WHO, UNICEF as well as Centres for Disease

Control, and other national health and educational authorities and civil society

organizations. Such resources have double value if they promote literacy

 Recommendations for government decision makers at national and subnational

level: •

Request schools, localities and suppliers to take stock of school feeding challenges

and opportunities experienced during the emergency.

• Compile and document such challenges and opportunities.

• Keep track of areas that did not manage to continue school feeding in any form.

• Draft a plan, if possible, with specific benchmarks, for gradual re-establishment of

school feeding, nutrition and WASH programmed

. • Prepare teachers, staff, parents, students, and the community for the school

reopening and the continuation of school feeding, health and nutrition services.

3.5 Overworked teachers

The Teachers' Dignity Coalition camps outside the DepEd head office and calls for

changes in the monitoring systems and paperwork. MANILA, Philippines – Despite clamor

from public school teachers to act against “excessive” paperwork and systems, the

Department of Education (DepEd) maintained all its requirements were legal and

necessary for the improvement of basic education.

Education Secretary Leonor Briones said that DepEd "does not exist" for teachers

to suffer and that issues raised were not caused by the department. The DepEd was

responding to calls from Teachers' Dignity Coalition, composed of around 30,000

teachers, who are camped outside the DepEd headquarters. As teachers, our first duty

is to teach – not gather documents, accomplish forms, photograph every move, please
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observers in demos, complete excessive lesson plans, and report to school on Saturdays.

As educators, we talk a lot about how teachers are poorly paid and how unrealistic

the demands are. But we don’t talk nearly as much about how things got to be this way.

We need to understand the societal norms, institutional structures, gender dynamics, and

so on that got us where we’re at today in order to be able to change them moving forward.

The Department of Education should review its policy concerning public school

teachers' workload, as actual teaching is increasingly being sidelined by non-teaching

duties that teachers have to perform, a state think tank said. A study by Philippine Institute

for Development Studies titled "Pressures on Public School Teachers and Implications

on Quality" cautioned that giving public school teachers administrative tasks and other

duties may distract them from their core function of effective teaching. PIDS said most

private schools employ administrative staff while public school teachers have insufficient

support.

Under the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers, teachers are required to

devote up to six hours of actual teaching per day. On top of this, teachers are given

administrative or student support roles, which include, among others, paperwork on

seminars and training workshops they are required to attend, as well as tasks related to

student guidance, budget, disaster response and health.

Teachers are likewise expected to participate in the implementation of various

government programs, such as mass immunizations, community mapping, conditional

cash transfer, deworming, feeding, population census, antidrug, and election," the PIDS

study said. Most teachers have relatively equal amounts of work to do and that the only

way to get it all done is to devote untold hours to the job, usually at the expense of other

areas of their lives.

But such an assumption is wrong. Teachers vary greatly in how much work they

have to get done and it’s not because they teach in different buildings or teach different

grade levels or have different bosses. Some teachers have less to do because they’ve

decided to have less to do. It’s usually that simple. There are a number of items you can

likely take off your to-do list tomorrow if you’re willing to swallow some pride, care less

about what other adults think of you, and stop trying to knock every lesson out of the park.

Possible Solution:

 Don’t decorate your classroom too much: I know teachers who spend weeks

getting their rooms looking just so for the start of school. They then devote even

more time to maintaining its immaculate appearance throughout the year. They

organize, straighten, color-code, label, redecorate, change bulletin boards, hang

curtains, from the ceiling, and for what? Hardly anyone is going to see it. Of those

who are impressed, what does it matter? How does their being impressed help you

or your students? I don’t know of a single study that shows a connection between

teachers’ interior design talents and student performance. In fact, the research that

does exist indicates that a heavily decorated room actually disrupts student
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attention and learning. Save yourself a ton of time and stop decorating your

classroom like it’s in a magazine.

 Stop Creating Lessons- Once upon a time, teachers had to create their own

lessons. They don’t anymore, and they shouldn’t. For today’s teachers, finding

lessons isn’t the problem; choosing among hundreds of them is the greater

challenge. Creation takes time that others have already invested (and in many

cases, been paid for). Creating many lesson plan in burden from teachers because

they spend a lot of time 24 hours working in the school and at home, we all know

lesson plan I a guide but in the reality we cannot follow that because sometimes

there is situation that learners learn in the different approach and strategy.

Sometime teachers are focusing on doing lesson plan than teaching the students.

 Stop Creating Materials Google is your friend. So is Teachers Pay Teachers.

Every worksheet, rubric, and graphic organizer you will ever want already exists.

Spend more time clicking and less time creating and you will have more time for

the important stuff.

 Stop the implementation of the Results-Based Performance Management

System (RPMS); The department said this was implemented following orders of

the Civil Service Commission for government agencies to create and establish a

performance management system for its workers. DepEd said the RPMS ensures
 employees work towards achieving the department’s policies and priorities. It is

also managing, monitors, and measures performance to identify efforts for

improvement. Included in RPMS are classroom observations of teachers which

DepEd said was “crucial” in improving teacher quality. The department said

indicators for observations were agreed upon observers and teachers themselves

to ensure preparedness. The DepEd added observations from the school’s division

office also had no direct weight when reviewing teacher’s performance.

 Stop ongoing classroom observation of teachers;

 Stop the implementation of the Daily Lesson Log (DLL);

 Prohibit Saturday make up classes;

 Implement a 6-hour workday. The DepEd said teachers were not exempted for

8-hour workdays for government employees. They also said under civil service

rules, teachers should have 6 hours of teaching and 2 hours for “teaching-related

tasks.” However, the DepEd said it would release an order specifying teachers

may complete the 2 hours of “teaching-related tasks” outside school premises and

that no proof of service is needed for this.If teachers choose to work outside

schools, they should not receive salary reductions. During the DepEd’s press

briefing however, Briones also hit workers who “counted” their work.“If there is a

child that needs to be taught, you won’t count 6 hours,” she said in Filipino. "That

is what we look for in those who serve the country.”

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3.6 Campus fights (fraternities, bullying, etc.)

Bullying can be exhibited through physical, verbal, or social hurt. bullying is a type

of aggressive behavior that takes place when an individual intentionally causes someone

else discomfort on repeated occasions. People can experience bullying at any stage of

life, but it most commonly happens among school-aged children. Students may begin

exhibiting bullying behavior as early as preschool and kindergarten; if left unchecked, the

behaviors tend to escalate and increase as they grow older.

Bullying can happen for a variety of reasons and it can happen for different reasons

depending on the child who is bullying. Some children who bully may lack parental

attention and guidance while others may want to feel powerful or popular and see bullying

as the way to achieve that. Others may have been bullied themselves (either at school or

at home) and see bullying as a way to regain control and feel empowered. While some

children are naturally more assertive and dominating, these personality traits do not

always result in bullying behavior. Bullying is often a learned behavior rooted in

aggression. Rather than addressing the symptoms, parents and educational staff must

get to the root problem in order to change these negative behaviors.

Possible Solution:

By law, all schools are required to have anti-bullying policies in place. These will vary by

individual school, but common components include:

1. A mission statement, where the school outlines how students will learn in a safe

and bully-free environment

2. A code of conduct, where expected students behaviors are laid out in detail

3. A bill of rights, a short and memorable document outlining the individual rights of

students and how they can expect to be treated by teachers, staff and fellow

students while at school

4. A reporting system, with a clear and standardized protocol for students to report

rule violations

5. schools provide the message that bullying will not be tolerated and they make it

clear that there are consequences to bullying it tends to trickle down to the students.

6. If your child is scared to confront the person who is bullying them, that could be a

sign that the behavior is severe. In this case, contact school officials. Meet with

your child’s teacher or speak with the principal about the situation. If there is threat

of violent behavior, it’s imperative to bring in school officials and alert the police

immediately. Once a threat of violence or criminal behavior has been mentioned,

it’s a case for the police. Recognizing the signs early on and talking about it openly

with your child can diffuse many situations before they reach a more serious level.
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3.7 Fake News and the Trolling Business

On social networks, the reach and effects of information spread occur at such a

fast pace and so amplified that distorted, inaccurate or false information acquires a

tremendous potential to cause real world impacts, within minutes, for millions of users.

Recently, several public concerns about this problem and some approaches to mitigate

the problem were expressed.

Across the Philippines, it’s a virtual free-for-all. Trolls for companies. Trolls for

celebrities. Trolls for liberal opposition politicians and the government. Trolls trolling trolls.

The world of Internet trolls — the gas lighting, the fabrications, the nastiness — is now a

fact of life in the Web ecosystem nearly everywhere.

It’s easy to say that fake news is a problem. But most of what you read about “fixing

it” are facile and limited ideas. To really fix it, we have to understand all of the problem,

recognize why fake news spreads, and really know what “fixing it” would really mean.

Social networks like Facebook thrive on interaction and sharing. For that to work, anyone

has to be able to share anything. People share what catches their eye and reinforces their

prejudices: the more outrageous, the better. Truth doesn’t enter into it. And as I’ll show,

truth is a complicated thing to define.

The danger of the troll equation:

The First Amendment guarantees us free speech. It protects parody and satire.

And while you can theoretically prosecute people who make up fake stories for libel, the

burden of proof is high, the costs are expensive, and the sites, many of which are out of

reach in other parts of the world, multiply like cockroaches.

If misleading and fake news is the match, social media is the gasoline. Social

media sites are open to all, and they’re designed to make popular things spread. That’s

a feature, not a flaw. And especially on sites like Tumblr, Twitter, and Reddit that don’t

insist on people’s real names, trolls abound. Trolls are people who want to make trouble

and don’t care about the truth.

Possible solution:

1.Triangulate the information - use more than one method to collect data on the same

topic. This is a way of assuring the validity of research through. The use of a variety of

methods to collect data on the same topic, which involves different types of samples as

well as methods of data collection.

2.Check for the references or sources of the news, articles and check the dates where

it published.

3. Individual must be aware of what information they share, they must “Think before you

click”.

4. Critical thinking- the power of critical thinking. If you’re a better thinker, you’re a better

judge of information, and that’s how we will finally beat fake news.
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