Dear Mr. Secretary:
When I first heard about your name as one of the candidates to succeed Vice President Sara Duterte as Department of Education secretary, my honest initial reaction was, “Pulitiko na naman” (It’s a politician again). Just like everyone else, I would have wanted someone who was a teacher for many years or who established a career and reputation as an education leader in a highly respected learning institution. These were the ideal qualities and backgrounds we were eyeing for our leadership.
As I further scanned a pubmat featuring your credentials, a detail saying you served as chair of the Senate finance committee made me think that, “Hey, he might be fit for the job because he might find ways to raise our salary!” I also thought that, as a senator, you would have access to your colleagues in the higher chamber, where you can personally push for the raise in teachers’ salary.
Of course, I would be a hypocrite if I wouldn’t request for a competitive raise. The raise means the government according high respects for a reputable profession, apart from keeping excellent and dedicated teachers from leaving the classroom for administrative promotion or for a teaching stint abroad.
But what captured my attention were the laws on education and student welfare that you principally authored, and your thrust in reforming Philippine education by authoring the 2nd Congressional Commission on Education Act (EDCOM 2) and leading the working group as one of its commissioners. These impressive and rich credentials beneficial to Philippine education made you a qualified successor.
As you possess both pro-education legislative credentials and financial management experience, I think you are in a position to understand our request for raising support for quality teaching — more than raising our economic welfare — based on the situation on the frontline.
Cheating, plagiarism, scholastic fraud are rampant
I am saddened that the purposeful and propitious nature of assessment of learning outcomes is hampered by the prevalence of academic integrity issues. In my almost a decade of serving on the frontline, a myriad of students have been caught committing cheating, plagiarism, and other forms of scholastic fraud. I should know this because I have been handling writing and reading classes in senior high school, where students are prone to submit written works from online sources or from websites offering AI-generated outputs. I have listened to similar concerns from some of our colleagues and it seems like integrity issues become part of our regular conversations.
The pandemic school years’ set-up slapped us with the unfortunate proliferation of cheating, as “online kopyahan” still reverberates in my memory. In post-pandemic school years, the dilemma remains and even more challenging to address with the accessibility of artificial intelligence. A highly reliable AI checker of students’ outputs or any technological solutions isn’t available yet as a countermeasure.
Last May, during the heights of moving up, graduation, and recognition rites in our schools, netizens took notice of the “unusual” high number of academic excellence (honor) awardees. They pointed out that these were inconsistent with the country’s poor ratings in various international education assessments. As someone working from within the public education sector and who has encountered academic integrity issues among our learners, I can’t help but to agree with the netizens. Even academic excellence awardees, in my experience, were positively identified committing dishonesty in written outputs, quizzes, and even in major exams.
One of the priority areas in the Year 1 Report is the Measurement of Learning Outcomes (Priority Area No. 6). The report cited the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) regarding the vital role of assessments in “[developing] students’ capacity to reason, think critically and creatively, and apply concepts from different disciplines to address real-world problems.” These 21st century skills are actually what Filipino learners lacked in previous PISA assessments. However, none from the report and from the list of what to look forward to in its Year 2 report have noticed with substantial discussion the teacher-initiated or classroom assessment concerns where academic integrity issue is subsumed.
How can our learners perform well in international assessments when results of teacher-initiated assessments in the classroom are possibly unreliable because they are rigged? Mr. Secretary, teacher-initiated assessments are crucial since they target the formation of competencies (formative test) and evaluation of students’ learning after the instruction (summative test), thereby serving as platforms where wide array of concepts, critical and creative thinking skills of our learners are being developed and sharpened. When done and supported properly, our learners’ performance in teacher-related assessments may translate to improving or satisfactory results in the international assessments.
It is in this sense that I appeal to you, Mr. Secretary, to heed our call to make use of DepEd resources in hiring more support staff and guidance counselling personnel to work with teachers in addressing and preventing learner’s scholastic and behavioral concerns, including academic integrity. EDCOM 2 Year 1 reported a whopping 50 ancillary tasks designated to us. To say that it is a lot is an understatement.
Support personnel can certainly take the clerical or ancillary tasks shouldered by teachers through the years so we can devote quality time in preparing for our lessons and in intensive assessment, checking, and scrutiny of our students’ outputs. If we eye to all together reap the considerable impacts of assessment, as stressed by NCEE, and address integrity issues, the upcoming EDCOM 2 reports must cover and look closely at academic integrity issues in teacher-initiated assessments and arrive at recommendations to DepEd to address its underlying alarming concerns.
Student burnout from too many subjects
Meanwhile, I welcome the current review of the SHS curriculum which I think is needed and timely. Most of our students have experienced burn out as they deal with 7 to 10 subjects per semester that include their major/specialization subjects and research subject which are apparently challenging in nature at their end. The subjects are unable to unlock students’ maximum potential and inculcate its optimum competencies among learners due to its congested roster. When I interviewed some learners about their reason of violating academic integrity, many of them replied with bombardment of tasks due to simultaneous demands from their subjects, while others are simply being irresponsible.
With your background as author and one of the commissioners of Congressional Education Commission 2, and your track record in crafting crucial laws for the welfare of Filipino learners, Secretary Angara, you might care to ensure their academic welfare by checking the overloading of our students’ school work due to congested line-up and quantity of subject areas that turn out as root causes of their burn-out and their commission of academic dishonesty. May your leadership, with assistance from our curriculum designers and policy makers, help our teachers in creating a healthy and enjoyable schooling experience for our children.
Steps in dealing with academic dishonesty
With all the points I made about academic integrity issues among our learners, I propose, Mr. Secretary, to institutionalize it in our agency by creating a DepEd Order separate from Batas Pambansa Blg. 232 (Chapter III, Section 15) and DepEd Order no. 40 s. 2012, Section 9) to underscore its importance, create preventive programs, campaigns, interventions, and disciplinary actions, targeting students and parents. Teachers, meanwhile, as implementers, shall be trained for assessment of students’ output, specifically on checking the authenticity, employment of preventive measures, and for exercising due process in subjecting a student violator under disciplinary actions.
The institutionalization is a big step forward from a mere memorandum from our agency’s former undersecretary (2021) accentuating academic integrity if not only through the prevalence of “online kopyahan” during the pandemic school years where cheating was reported notorious among learners in accomplishing tasks and modular activities in their distance learning modality.
In the school where I teach, I sat down with our school head to seek her approval for launching an academic integrity program following the reported cheating in the previous school years, with the most recent incidents during the final examination last school year. She gave me the green light on this proposal that initially constitutes a Tapatan Conference with students, their parents, and teachers which aims to raise awareness about academic dishonesty, explain its different forms and enumerate its ill effects. Part also of this conference is raising awareness of the consequences and corresponding disciplinary actions. In my experience, a few of the students involve in academic integrity issue are unaware of committing such violation.
The Tapatan Conference will be followed up by Honor Code or Pledge signing by students and parents to concretize their commitment of observing academic integrity. I have not seen so much of this in Philippine schools, except from few private tertiary learning institutions. Honor Code system is observed in plethora of schools in the U.S. including Stanford. According to a study, codified reminders of ethical principles in the honor code system “serve to prime honest behavior and deter cheating in students” (Grym & Liljander, 2017). Additionally, honor code existence in schools proved a reduction of academic dishonesty incidents involving students (Melendez 1985: McCabe et al. 2002).
I suggest, Mr. Secretary, to integrate the Tapatan Meeting and Honor Code signing in institutionalizing academic integrity in our agency. Besides, holding these two does not demand so much from our agency’s financial coffer.
Mr. Secretary, I ‘m sure you are aware that you will be leading the biggest department with one of the biggest predicaments. I have shared to you our challenges that torment our delivery of quality work. One is, of course, raising our salary. Who wouldn’t like a raise? Of course, we like and we need it. We would be hypocrite if we say otherwise. Aside from that, however, we also want to raise the quality of teaching to protect our learners from moral degradation and from learning poverty.
We wish you to be steadfast in continuing your advocacy for our students, teachers, and Philippine education as you have shown as a legislator. On our end, we commit to work with you hand-in-hand, side-by-side, with due support from your leadership.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey
Public School Teacher, DepEd Bataan
— Rappler.com
Jeffrey C. Gliban, 31, is a public school teacher and student publication adviser at Limay Senior High School in Bataan. He is studying for his graduate degree at the University of Santo Tomas.