DepEd reports increase in Grade 6 pupils' national test score

MANILA, Philippines - Public Grade 6 students have chalked up mean percentage scores (MPS) of 65 percent for this year’s National Achievement Test (NAT), the Department of Education reported Wednesday. Education Secretary Jesli Lapus said the 5-percent increase from 59.94 percent to 64.81 percent to 64.81 percent is a “very encouraging” result that brought the agency closer to its target of 75 percent MPS by 2010. "The key reforms and well-focused policy directions to improve basic education are slowly but surely bearing fruit," Lapus said. The agency likewise reported that the number of pupils with low mastery (score of 15 to 34 percent) have decreased from 8.18 percent in 2007 to 3.67 percent in 2008 while those students moving towards mastery increased by 10.36 percent, from 38.72 percent in 2007 to 49.08 percent in 2008. Schools with low mastery decreased from 3 in every 100 elementary schools in 2007 to 1 in every 100 elementary schools this year. Some 1.64 million students from 30,396 public schools took the NAT last March. In the key subjects tested, students showed the biggest improvement in Science with a percentage increase of 12.26 percent, from an MPS of 51.58 percent in 2007 to 57.90 percent in 2008. It was followed by big strides in Filipino and HEKASI which posted an improvement of 10.84 percent and 10.47 percent, respectively. Overall, the average increment in MPS in Math, Science and English among Grade 6 students was 6.24 percent, from last year's MPS of 44.29 percent to 47.67 percent this year. "We are slowly earning dividends from our investment in public education and we have our hardworking DepEd family and our private sector partners to thank for," Lapus said. He added that the education department has been concentrating its human and financial resources on key performance indicators in basic education. “We have embarked on a host of intervention programs aimed at improving classroom instruction. These include the Every Child a Reader Program, continuing teacher training in teaching English, priority in hiring teachers who have majored in Math, Science and English, provision of one book each for every student in core subjects, food for school program and Project TURN or Turning Around Low Performance in English, among others,” he said. The education chief said majority of the schools under DepEd's Project TURN have shown marked improvement in the 2008 NAT. Of the 1,898 elementary schools under the project, a total of 1,453 or 78.80 percent are now nearing the higher mastery level, or those with a score of 86 to 95 percent. Only 391 schools or 21.20 percent remained in the low mastery level. NAT is an annual examination administered to public school students throughout the country to determine their achievement level, strengths and weaknesses in key subject areas. - GMANews.TV