A PHILIPPINE senator said on Sunday that the government should establish an independent agency or body that would assess learner outcomes of students in public schools.
“If you think about it, how can the Department of Education (DepEd) do self-correction when it is the one who developed and delivered the curriculum?” Senator Sherwin T. Gatchalian said in a statement.
Mr. Gatchalian cited as an example Australia’s National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), a program that is independently run and measures how well Australian youth are developing their skills and literacy.
“It makes sense to have an independent body to come up with the assessment, analyze it, and tell the DepEd what to do because then you have the concept of check and balance,” said Mr. Gatchalian.
He recalled that in 1991, the government already pushed for the creation of an autonomous national testing and evaluation agency, but it did not materialize. — John Victor D. Ordoсez
