Teachers, at the heart of the process

Thursday, 14 July 2011 05:48

Written by Louie C. Montemar

Education is more than learning or the mere acquisition of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values.  It is about learning that serves the interests of one’s community.  It is in this sense that education is a very qualitative, social process.

At the heart of this process are our teachers.

The Philippine public school system, as the country’s main education mechanism, is replete with numerous issues and one key concern now is the “quality of education” that it offers, especially as this relates to the competence and abilities of our teachers to perform their pedagogical roles and tasks — a concern therefore for “teacher quality” in our learning systems.

“Quality education” is a tricky concept to pin down mainly because different stakeholders hold different ideas about what it refers to and what education itself is all about.  However, there is clear evidence that teacher quality matters in this regard.

For instance, in UNESCO’ Global Monitoring Report for 2005 on its Education for All thrust, it is pointed out how in the cases of Canada, Cuba, Finland and Republic of Korea—countries that have achieved high standards of education quality as shown, among others, in their leading performance in student achievement tests—teachers have become a leading factor in maintaining quality education.

In these countries a commonality is their “high esteem for the teaching profession, through pre-service training and sometimes restrictive admission, and a well-developed constellation of in-service training, plus mechanisms for mutual learning and teacher support are evident in all these countries.”  Most notably, in these countries’ learning systems, “there are no concessions on teacher quality, even where teacher shortages exist.”

One good practice can be seen in the case of a system of teacher accreditation in Ontario, which is under consideration elsewhere.  In this system, the UNESCO reports, teachers are tested every five years, and those who fail lose their teaching certificate.

I think something like this needs to be put in place in our country.

In a paper presented by UNICEF at the meeting of the International Working Group on Education Florence in Italy, in June 2000, it is pointed out that “teaching and learning about life skills requires interactive, student-centred methods,” and  since “skills are by definition active, competency is unlikely to be developed without active practice.”  

However, as the UNICEF notes in a related report done in the year 2000 on education, “teaching methods that facilitate active student learning rather than promote passivity and rote memorization represent a new and difficult paradigm for many teachers, but one that needs to be understood and put into practice if learner outcomes are to improve.”

Our teachers have to be upskilled and regularly updated.  For them to be most effective, quality content must be situated in a context of quality processes — “processes through which trained teachers use child-centred teaching approaches in well-managed classrooms and schools and skilful assessment to facilitate learning and reduce disparities,” as the UNICEF specifies.

Furthermore, one study shows that student-centered schools which focus on quality education have found that adapting to the rhythms and requirements of local communities results in higher participation and better student outcomes.  Teachers and schools should therefore be most flexible in their educational management approaches.  But are they?  To what extent is the DepEd bureaucracy open to empowering teachers?  Do we even have the needed teachers?  Some data are very telling in this regard.

In 2007, tests have shown that many teachers training higher elementary grades and high school only have the competency to teach Grade 4 subjects.  On top of that, in 2007, almost two-thirds or 62% of public schools (with 24,834 at the elementary level and 1,451 at secondary) had no full-fledged principals to provide instructional leadership.

For 2010, there was an estimated shortage of 54,060 teachers, 4,538 principals, and 6,473 head teachers.  Today these acute shortages remain largely unaddressed.  These take on a darker hue if one considers that “the opportunity to learn and the time on task [of mentors and learners] have been shown in many international studies to be critical for educational quality.”

The results of the licensure examinations of teachers suggest the low quality of higher education in many teacher training institutions.  Of the 31,306 examinees that toook the licensure examinations for elementary school teachers in 2010, only 4,836 passed.  That is a measly 15%.  Last year it was 19%.

If the quality of education in teacher training institutions can not be assured, this can have dire implications on education in general.

Given DepEd’s lengthening of the years for basic education, we hope that teacher training and welfare are not set aside or overlooked.  There can be no concessions on this.  We need only the best for our children.

For our politicians and education bureaucrats, perhaps they should ask themselves, as they make policies on and monitor the education system’s performance, “Would I enroll my own children in our public schools?”  An affirmative answer is an affirmation of the existence of quality education.

Let’s rev up the education system.  And never forget that our teachers are at the heart of that system.

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