Opinion: The PH Is at Bottom 10 in Math, Science, Reading Worldwide—But I See Hope

(SPOT.ph) The results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) just came out. Every three years (with an additional year this time due to COVID), PISA tests thousands of 15-year-olds from all over the world, focusing on Math scores, with Reading and Science scores as minor concerns.

This year, 81 countries participated in the test. In the Philippines, 7,193 Filipino students were part of the study. The test is considered to be the gold standard in wide-scale international assessments.

After reading the report—it’s a fantastic one, by the way—I wanted to share my two cents as an education advocate and as the executive director of AHA Learning Center, a small non-profit organization that runs community learning and leadership centers and conducts teacher training. I have two quick misconceptions, four key takeaways, and four hopes.

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What do the recent PISA results say about Philippine education?

Two probable misconceptions

1. While at first glance it seems like our ranking improved (we are not the last, we are only 6th to the last in Math for instance), PISA reports that these improvements are not statistically significant, and that the average results in 2022 were very similar to the results we had in 2018.

PISA does say that low achievers performed better in Math this time around, however there were no top performers in Math when the global average was 9%.

2. The results can also be misinterpreted as proof that we at least survived the pandemic and did not slide down any further.

Not sure if that is completely true. Many of the previous headlines on learning poverty focused on literacy for Philippine kids in grade school and PISA focused on Math for 15-year-olds (the Reading and Science parts were significantly less).

The Philippine students most affected by school closures were those in Key Stage Area 1 (Grades 1-3) during the school years of 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-22, during the longest global shutdown of schools.

These kids are Grades 3 to 6 now and are the subject of many of DepEd’s learning recovery interventions under the Matatag agenda, which really opened up ways for CSOs (Civil Service Organizations) like us to get involved.

Four key takeaways

1. Some alarming stats, considering we are a poor nation obsessed with TikTok:

Globally, the mean performance score in Math fell a record of 15 points from 2018 to 2022.

Globally, 30% of students were distracted by digital devices (PH is at 40%).

Globally, socio-economically disadvantaged students were seven times more likely on average than advantaged students not to achieve basic Math proficiency.

2. The kids are not alright (even if they seem like they are).

The Philippines scored above average in two major categories (1) motivating themselves to do school work (PH 68.1% vs average 58.1%) (2) agreeing that their teacher was available when they needed help (PH 81.5% vs average 65.6%).

However, we scored below average in “finding someone to help them do their school work” (PH 65.6 vs. average 75).

And while we scored above average (PH 18.3 vs global average of 13.3) on the question “someone from their school checked in with them to ask how they were feeling every day or almost every day,” that’s still just 18.3% mga kaibigan, that’s not a lot.

This complements the data that the Philippines scored the worst on the question “if feeling the loneliest at school” worldwide with 28% to the global average of 16%. And how the we scored 28% again on “how kids feel like an outsider in school,” against the global average of 17%.

In what would be the most Pinoy of contradictions ever, we did score higher than OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) average in “making friends easily at school” (PH 83% to OECD 76%).

3. Bullying and parent involvement are still problems, but there are bright spots.

While the Philippines again scored the highest in bullying amongst global averages (43% of girls and 53% of boys versus global averages of 20% of girls and 21% of boys), it is a huge improvement from 2018. Moreover, only 15% of the Filipino students reported nasty rumors spread about them in 2022, verus 32% in 2018.

Parent involvement worldwide was on the decline in 2018, however the Philippines had incurred just a slight dip with minimal losses in (1) principal reporting that at least half of the families discussed their child’s progress with a teacher on their own initiative (63% for the PH in 2022 vs 72% in 2018) (2) on the teachers initiative (83% for the PH in 2022, vs 86% in 2018).

4. A significant proportion of the Philippine kids who took the test were disadvantaged.

Thirty six percent (largest share worldwide) were in the bottom international quintile of the socio-economic scale, meaning the Philippines had one of the largest groups of disadvantaged kids who took the test.

Out of the 81 countries, the Philippines was third in “% of students not eating in the past 30 days because not enough money to buy food,” with a little under 40%.

Four hopes

1. Just last week, I was surprised to meet an old classmate, a group of public school teachers, and a businessman—who for whatever reason, did not know how real this learning crisis was, how badly we performed in tests like PISA, and how dire the situation is for most learners all over the country.

I know this report will spark anger but I hope this report sparks action. Actually now more than ever, there are multiple pathways to change things in education. There’s education reform happening in congress with Edcom2, there’s education reform happening in local government with Synergeia. There’s at least half a dozen, medium to large scale education initiatives like USAID ABC+ that has promising and game-changing builds.

There are at least a dozen of us, small, scrappy, and hungry education advocates whose tribes grow every day. And while we maybe many, we are not nearly enough to make change work. We need specialists, professionals, droves of people to care about this issue.

If you don’t know where to start or what to do, start with giving 30 minutes of your time for free. Support one of us, or better yet, support a public school near you. Start small, start slowly. The important thing is to just start.

2. Each of these reports come with recommendations. Some are practical (keep schools open longer), some feel impossible (limit distractions caused by digital devices), some need great school participation (establishing peer to peer tutoring for schools to be hubs for social interaction).

These recommendations need implementors that can experiment, test, and monitor these builds. There are too many people who want to talk about these problems, and too few of us who are actually daring to solve them. While I have nothing against policy makers and researchers (most of whom are my favorite people), we do find ourselves in an ecosystem imbalance when we convene education advocates. There is just not enough of us to make these things happen in the ground, and work with teachers to see these things through.

Think about reorienting your org, your coalition, into either investing in long-term education implementation or viable education implementors, that can work with policy groups and research entities. This is a problem that is only getting worse. We owe it to the children to have a complete and working system where we have at least a working ecosystem of actors.

3. I hope that when we read these stats, we think about how this affects people in a granular level. Imagine how an entire school not performing at grade level affects a school’s culture. Imagine how confusing it is to name your school a safe space when bullying persists. Imagine how most kids are just waiting to be asked how they are, and how no one asks.

We need to go beyond thinking what it feels like to be in another person’s shoes. We need to try to understand how many of these uncomfortable feelings many public school kids go through are familiar feelings. We’ve all felt alone, all felt like a failure, all felt like we couldn’t understand something no matter how hard we tried, all felt unsafe.

For most of you reading this, that feeling of being unsafe for instance was something we felt loudly during Covid. What if that feeling never left? For most Filipinos, these feelings stay and are part of their every day realities.

4. For the last two years, we’ve been doing teaching at the right level, a literacy and numeracy program aimed at getting older kids Grades 4-6 to read a simple paragraph and to divide in 60 hours. In the last six months, we have gotten so many requests to teach hundreds of kids who are in junior high to divide. To teach hundreds of kids in senior high to read a simple paragraph. This is crazy.

Also read: Stuck Between: Why Filipinos Can't Break From the Sandwich-Generation Cycle

I wrote this before: for me, this isn’t the time to fight, this is the time to work together. Not the time to point fingers but to listen harder. Not the time to figure out who has the bigger win, but the time to be humble enough to acknowledge big losses.

I’d leave you with one last stat, the most important part of the report.

Percentage of socio-economically disadvantaged students who scored in the top quarter of mathematics performance in their own country. PISA rephrasing: disadvantaged students who are academically resilient.

The Philippines is number 30 out of 81, sandwiched between Spain and Japan. Wild, right?

Even wilder, that resilience stat has a name and face to me. That’s my AHA students. That’s our Filipino students all over the Philippines who despite this report will continue trying every day. That’s the hundreds of Grade 7 students who took reading classes in provinces last quarter. That’s resilience we can learn from, resilience we can lean on, resilience that talks about disadvantages in real ways. Resilience that hopefully we, as people who want to help change things, can start with.

Jaton Zulueta is founder and executive director of AHA Learning Center, a non-profit organization which offers tutoring for the less privileged, “fights education equity by putting up community learning and leadership centers and runs teacher training.” He is a Ten Outstanding Young Men, Obama Foundation and Ashoka Foundation awardee.