Home | To bottom

Low budget to blame for poor NAT results?

SAN FERNANDO CITY, La Union (June 10) — An official of the regional Department of Educatio (DepEd) here said that poor results in the recent National Achievement Test (NAT) can be attributed to the low budget for the public education sector.

Ernesto Florendo, secondary school division chief at the regional DepEd said about 73,000 senior students who took the exam on February fared poorly in English, Science, and Math.

“Insufficient laboratory, computers, instructional materials continue to degrade the quality of high school students. Surge in yearly enrolment and the need to hire more competitive teachers aggravate the low scores,” he said.

There are about 406 secondary schools in the region trooped by over 300,000 high school students this year, DepEd data show. The teacher-student ratio is 1:40, but the actual number of students may reach up to 60 since there were fewer number of classrooms to accommodate them, Florendo said. The distribution of teachers was also a factor in the low score he said, as there were fewer designation at the barangay level secondary schools.

Some 65,000 incoming sophomore students in the region will take the NAT on February 2006.

Florendo said cash-strapped schools learn to cope with the local government’s initiative to pay for the additional teachers and fund for modernizing the schools. Private firms also pitched in through the “adopt-a-school’ program by the department, he said. # Jong de la Cruz for NORDIS

Home | Back to top