Only 1 public school in NCR got passing mark in 2022 PISA

Only one public school in Metro Manila scored above the minimum proficiency level in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 global comprehension survey, a Department of Education (DepEd) official said Wednesday.

During the hearing of the Senate Committee on Basic Education, DepEd National Capital Region (NCR) director Jocelyn Andaya said only Benigno S. Aquino High School in Makati City made the cut out of all Metro Manila public schools in the study.

Aside from Benigno S. Aquino High School, five more schools passed the assessment but they were all private schools, Andaya said.

"In NCR, there was just one from the public [schools] of the 21 [that participated in PISA]... It's Benigno Aquino [High School]," she said.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) which conducts the study, the 2022 PISA covered reading, mathematics, and science, plus an evaluation of students' creating thinking and financial literary skills. The major focus was on mathematics.

Senator Win Gatchalian, chair of the Senate Committee on Basic Education chairperson, said the PISA results can be used in coming up with solutions to address the issues in the Philippines' education system.

"How do we go up? How do we implement solutions so that we will improve learner performance?" Gatchalian said.

For her part, Senator Nancy Binay said she analyzed the current methods of teaching in schools and suggested that actual applications of lessons be taught instead of asking students to just memorize them.

"It's difficult to break old habits. The big question is how do we teach our new teachers? Maybe it's time to revisit and change the curriculum on how we are teaching our teachers as well," Binay said.

Based on the 2022 PISA results, the Philippines placed as the sixth lowest among the 81 countries and economies participating in the study.

Filipino learners also continued to lag behind in mathematics and reading comprehension.

In the Philippines, a total of 7,193 students in 188 schools completed the assessment in mathematics, reading or science, representing about 1,782,900 individual 15-year-old students, or an estimated 83% of the total population of 15-year-olds, according to the 2022 PISA report. — VDV, GMA Integrated News