PRESIDENTIAL Adviser on Poverty Alleviation Larry Gadon has pushed for the stricter implementation of English as medium of instruction in all schools in the country saying Filipino students have been left behind as compared with their counterparts in other Asian countries.
He’s banking on newly-designated Department of Education Secretary Sonny Angara whom he believed could carry out plans to be able to improve the country’s Program for International Student Assessment ratings.
PISA is an international assessment that measures the literacy of 15-year-old students on reading, mathematics and science.
The presidential anti-poverty adviser noted that one indicator of the country’s state of basic education is its performance in PISA wherein it’sin the bottom ranking – 78/78 in 2018 and 77/81 in 2022.
What the local educators did before was to push for the bilingual medium of instruction to promote the Pilipino language for Filipinos, he said.
“They used to say that you weren’t a Filipino if you did not know how to talk in Filipino and you were an anti-Filipino if you’re talking in English. This was the wrong concept that was taught to us.”
Doubting over the success of the K-12 curriculum, he noted that Filipino students have been lagging far behind as compared with other students from the neighboring countries as indicated by the Philippines’ declining PISA rating.
“In fact, we’re now one at the lowest and to think that in the 40s, 50s and 60s, the Philippines was one in Asia that had competent and intelligent students and graduates because the primary medium of instruction back then was English, among others.”
He reiterated that DepEd under the leadership of Angara must consider going back to English as a primary medium of instruction in all schools.
“Let’s strictly implement this because in the first place, English has been the common language being used in the world and in many books and international studies, English is the medium.”
“If a student is poor in English, for sure he/she is not doing well in his/her studies,” he pointed out.
