Initial Senate findings on “distance learning” option allowing schoolchildren to study at home away from classrooms amid the Covid-19 contagion got mixed results.
“Assessment is already set in motion, meaning a lot of schools are already doing their own assessment and analysis whether our learners are in fact learning,” said Sen. Sherwin T. Gatchalian,” chairman of the Senate Committee on Education.
Gatchalian reported Thursday that he got the preliminary data from Valenzuela, adding: “I found out that their students there are not doing so well, hovering around the 40 percent range.”
The senator explained “the reason that I said they are not doing well is because pre-Covid, we already have a lot of problems in learner outcomes, if you remember we were last in PISA [Programme for International Student Assessment].”
“We are playing catching up so meaning we have to score a high of 70 percent and above to catch up that low performance in PISA. Having scores around 40 percent doesn’t speak well of our distance learning,” he added.
In an interview with ANC, Gatchalian clarified the “40 percent” pertained to the “Valenzuela assessment of our learners, meaning they assess our learners and they try to determine if their learners are indeed learning using these self-learning modules and the score that came out is around 40 percent.”
“This is across subjects, this is an average but the caveat here is it’s only in Valenzuela,” he said. “I just want to share this because the other areas, the other divisions are still doing their own assessments.”
Gatchalian adds his initial reaction was “it is very challenging to launch distance learning because not all our students have the luxury of Internet so all of them are using the manual self-learning modules and it’s very difficult because we rely on our parents to teach and to tutor our students and we all know that not all of our parents have graduated elementary or even high school.”
The senator acknowledged that even those students with stable Internet connection are struggling with academic requirements.
“In fact I conducted my own focus group on this and the initial reaction from parents is number one, concentration from the student is very difficult. There are a lot of distractions, especially if you are living in a small home. There’s a lot of distraction from your siblings, a lot of distractions from your parents themselves,” Gatchalian noted.
He added that “even the parents are distracted also because they are working, they are doing household chores so a lot of distractions.”
The senator conceded, “Concentration is very difficult inside the home,” noting this was “why the performance of our students are now affected because of the complications inside their homes and launching this distance learning.”
Gatchalian indicated he expects the Department of Education (DepEd) officials to provide the Senate panel a feedback upon completion of the DepEd assessment.
“The first semester will end this week, February 27. So meaning we’re already halfway when it comes to the school year and assessment is being conducted in various divisions. They will probably be available to the public, to policy-makers, by the first or second week of March,” the senator said.
He stressed the data that will come out from this assessment is “very important because it will help us come up with interventions that will help our students.”
“It is important to pinpoint where the students are weak and it’s important to give them the right interventions so that they can keep up so that when they move to the next grade level, they will have an easy time to keep up,” the senator added.
Asked about the gaps the Senate panel has identified aside from the problems with the learning modules and problems with households with no computers or even Internet connections, Gatchalian noted the most prevalent gaps the committee detected is “the intervention or the tutoring that our parents should give to our children.”
“Those who are independent learners, meaning grade four or grade five and above they can study by themselves but from kindergarten all the way to grade three the participation of our parents is very important,” the senator said.
“This is where the problem comes in because our parents come from different backgrounds, some graduated from college well and good, some of them didn’t have the luxury of graduating basic education and that is where the problem comes in.”
In the same interview Gatchalian reported he also talked to a lot of mayors, especially from rural areas where the complications come in because parents are not confident themselves to teach and to tutor their children, noting this was “why the clamor for face-to-face [learning at school] is quite loud in the rural areas because of these anecdotes and these examples.”
The senator also acknowledged another problem when a family has to worry about other things like livelihood.
“Definitely some of the comments that we get from the focus groups, the livelihood time or time to add additional money on the table is cut because they are now teaching or tutoring their children. So instead of going out to sell food or items to gain livelihood, that’s scrapped into half, waived from now to give time to teach our children. It is also affecting the livelihood and well-being of the entire family. So those are the things that we see in the distance learning complications…what we really want is for the government to intervene, DepEd to intervene to make it easier for example, some of the solutions that we are seeing is for our teachers to participate heavily, to add more time to connect with our students and to interact with our students. Some of the interventions that we are also seeing are roving teachers, teachers going to communities, interacting with students on a one-to-one basis and those students who need additional interventions, our teachers can go there and tutor the child.”