DepEd Focus on Schools with Low Mastery

The Department of Education has ranged a host of intervention programs to upgrade English instruction in elementary and high school with special focus on schools which registered in the low mastery level in the 2007 National Achievement Test.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has instructed DepEd to zero in on schools which tested low in mastery in the 2007 NAT. A student is considered in the low mastery level if the mean percentage score (MPS) is between 15 to 34 in the 100-item test per subject.

Earlier during the DepEd presentation in Malacanang before the members of the National Anti-Poverty Commission, Education Secretary Jesli A. Lapus outlined its programs that were designed to upgrade English instruction. This include the training of teachers to teach English which as of October 2007 totals 137,420 teachers nationwide.

The NAT, which measures what the students in Grade 3 and second year high school know, understand and can do, covers Mathematics, English, Science, Filipino and HEKASI.

The 2006 results for elementary students showed an MPS in English of 60.78

percent, a big jump from the 54.05 in 2005 -2006. For high school students, 2006 NAT results recorded an MPS of 51.81 percent, up from 51.20 percent in 2005 - 2006.

The NAT result in English for Grade 3 students was an MPS of 59.56 percent, a

10 percent improvement over 49.98 percent in previous year. "Despite the improving NAT results in English among our elementary students, we believe that we have to make an extra push to sustain their improving performance,“ Lapus said. “Our bigger goal is to upgrade English instruction among those schools which performed below mastery level,” he added.

Some 265 high schools which performed badly or those whose MPS ranged between 15-34 are the focus of intervention with the hope of achieving average mastery to moving towards mastery by 2008.

In the elementary division, DepEd is eyeing to upgrade the performance of 1,899 schools which are also at low mastery levels and achieve average mastery in the 2008 NAT.