THE COUNTRY’S overall performance in the Board Licensure Examination for Professional Teachers (BLEPT) has been “dismal” for the past nine years and is even further declining, according to private sector-led advocacy group Philippine Business for Education (PBEd).

In a press briefing on Monday, Oct. 2., PBEd cited among its “key findings” in this area of education the “dismal” overall performance in the exam also known as Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET), a “consistently poor performance” among teacher education institutions (TEIs) and “more graduates falling behind” through the years dating back to 2009. This, despite teacher education ranking high among such priority disciplines that include medicine, business administration, and engineering, among others.

“We see it as symptomatic of a much bigger problem of teacher quality in the country,” PBEd President Chito Salazar said in a statement by the advocacy group. For her part, executive director Love B. Basillote noted in Monday’s presentation that “more than half (of TEIs) are performing below” the established national average of 50%.

“And that’s already putting the bar fairly low because the national average is not that high. It’s actually the lowest performing licensure exam in the country,…at 30%,” she added. This is in comparison with the Philippine Development Plan’s target last year of 53%, a range in which the field of medicine ranked the highest at 58%, according to figures credited to the Commission on Higher Education.

PBEd also presented other figures showing poorly performing TEIs outnumbering the good ones in at least nine regions, and the rise among LET repeaters again failing the exam.

ZERO PASSING RATES
Citing data from the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC), PBEd presented a list of 27 poorly performing TEIs of which 13 have zero overall passing rates.

“You might notice that in the (poorly) performing schools, a lot of them are in Mindanao,” cited PBEd research manager Dylan S. Dellosa, adding that a number of them are in the city of Marawi.

The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and the Zamboanga Peninsula are among the regions that rank high among the poor performers, which, to be sure, are also represented by other regions elsewhere, notably the Ilocos, Bicol and the Visayas regions.

“Of this 27, you may note that nine or a full third are running on government funds, either local or state. So (right there), we already have questions on accountability. We need to institute… measures to (en)sure that at least the publicly funded ones have some level of accountability in terms of whether their programs (should) continue to operate,” Mr. Dellosa said.

PBEd calls for the closing down of at least 22 of the TEIs as an immediate solution to their poor performance.

“The exam itself (also) needs to be reformed. We must open it up to validity testing and item analysis, involve TEIs in test development, and revive the three-strike rule for takers,” Mr. Dellosa said, noting further that the said rule, akin to the Bar exams, “used to be the case with the LET” until this was revised by a memorandum.

Mr Dellosa noted the refusal “to release the questionnaire in every instance.” LET “remains one big mystery. Nobody really knows what happens in LET’s development.”

Ms. Basillote for her part said, “We’re also calling on the new PRC chair to release (the) exam, after each test instance, so experts can scrutinize whether or not it’s really a good screening mechanism.” — R.S. Torre with PBEd statement

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