Because Filipinos were busy with Christmas, the general public did not pay much attention to the disquieting news of the PISA 2022 results released last December 5, 2023. The ensuing conversation obscured the Dep Ed Secretary’s inference – “the results bares an “uncomfortable truth” that a vast majority of students are below the skill level required for full participation in society and contributing to nation building.” This is an implicit admission of a systems failure of the whole Dep Ed organization consisting of one million public school teachers tasked to educate the youth of the nation that use up billions of taxpayer money. We agree with the Dep Ed Secretary’s conclusion that is premised on two points.

First, Filipino students participating in PISA 2022 are five to six years behind in math, science, and reading comprehension compared to their 15-year-old counterparts from most participating countries. This finding is not surprising because it is disturbingly similar to the findings revealed in the 1925 Paul Monroe Report that compared Filipino children with American children in Arithmetic reasoning, vocabulary, sentence and paragraph reading. It appears that our education system is excessively stable, fortified with status quo bias mindset that effectively retard to glacier speed the pace of reforms for the last one hundred years.

Second, PISA 2022 shows that carrying out conversation in the English language is not enough to improve academic performance in reading, math and science communicated in English. Dep Ed Usec. Gina Gonong said, “children who speak mostly English at home performed lower in PISA.” It douses cold water on the delusional obsession of many Filipinos over the English language that started the irrational belief that a child speaking in English is a sign of intelligence.

W. Edwards Deming said that,” a bad system will beat a good person every time.” Paraphrasing Deming, we believe that a bad system will defeat a good program every time such as MTBMLE, FSL, the Matatag curriculum and Catch up Reading sessions. In the eyes of psychologists, the way forward in improving the system of education begins with changing the organizational culture of the 1 million Dep Ed personnel. The existing toxic culture in Dep Ed is a major obstacle to accomplishing Dep Ed’s constitutional mandate of delivering quality education for millions of students.

Dep Ed’s organizational culture reflects how teachers, school leaders, supervisors and superintendents, and the central office understand their respective work and treat each other, and it contributes to the unique social and psychological environment of the organization. There is no doubt that the teacher is the primary learning facilitator of the development of cognitive abilities of children. Unfortunately, the teacher’s inputs, drawn from experience in class, is generally ignored in the formulation of Dep Ed policies since many teachers without masters or doctorate degrees and hold a low salary grade are considered inferior. The teacher’s vast proficiency in managing pedagogy is disregarded by those who are steeped in theory but deficient in first hand practical application. Teachers are boxed in by Dep Ed, RO, SDO memos and circulars despite decentralization.

The rigidity of the organizational culture of Dep Ed has given birth to “memocracy” that emasculate the initiative of teachers who desire to improve learning of their students. An example would be the implementation of the MTBMLE that is given lip service only by senior Dep Ed officials but manacle teachers from using the child’s first language in class from Grade 4 onwards. Without a memo, teachers are anxious of reprimand from superiors. “It is easier to seek forgiveness than obtain permission,” said sarcastically by teachers. This culture prevails despite the Code of Ethics for Professional Teachers that ensures academic freedom ( Board for Professional Teachers Resolution No. 435 Series of 1997) , RA 9155, RA 10533 and the School Based Management decentralization thrust of Dep Ed.

The Japanese have a management concept called Kaizen (literally continuous improvement)- every day all employees are free to give suggestions to eliminate unnecessary tasks and increase the company’s production. The recommendations of the employees are valued and they develop a sense of affinity towards the company. Adopting this concept in Dep Ed could profoundly change its stifling organizational culture.

As a logical follow through, the Dep Ed systems failure requires rebooting to found new organizational practices and beliefs, and alter its culture that would now value inputs of teachers. But this is not easy to do. This is perhaps what the Secretary of Dep Ed truly means as the “uncomfortable truth” of our education system.