Dr. John Pegg and Dr. Jennie Jocson at the consultation meeting organized by the EDCOM 2 Standing Committee for Higher Education, and Teacher Education and Development.

SiMERR National Research Centre Director and RCTQ Co-Director Dr. John Pegg described the status of teacher quality in the country and offered recommendations to improve teacher development during a consultation meeting by the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2)  on 25 April 2023 in Pasig City.

The meeting centered on the most pressing issues confronting higher education, and was facilitated by the EDCOM 2 Standing Committee on Higher Education, and Teacher Education and Development.

Dr. Pegg presented the findings of the Teacher Development Needs Study (TDNS) conducted by RCTQ in 2015 which assessed in-service teachers’ knowledge of subject content and pedagogical knowledge of Mathematics, Science, English and Filipino for teachers of Grades 6, 8 and 10 relative to the K to 12 curriculum. Among other findings, the study found out that across the four content tests, teachers’ responses demonstrated a limited proficiency to analytically extract relevant information from the questions; make conceptual connections; and construct answers using relevant data.

“The test results—which reveal the same results as the World Bank study in 2014— indicate gaps in what teachers are expected to do based on the K to 12 curriculum,” Dr. Pegg said.

To address these gaps in the quality of Filipino teachers, and to respond to the country’s learning crisis, Dr. Pegg recommended the full implementation of the  National Educators Academy of the Philippines (NEAP) Transformation Detailed Design, which would also support the goal of the Excellence in Teacher Education Act.

Dr. Pegg said: “Many aspects of teacher policies will need to be re-considered. This rethinking of teacher policies includes i) how to optimize the pool of individuals from which teacher candidates are drawn, ii) recruiting systems and the ways in which staff are selected, iii) the kind of initial education recruits obtained before they start their job; iv) and how initial teacher education students are monitored and inducted into their service, v) the continuing education and support teachers receive, vi) how teacher compensation is structured, vii) how the performance of struggling teachers is improved; and viii) how the best performing (quality) teachers are given opportunities to acquire more status and responsibility.”

“EDCOM may look back to acknowledge how much the country has achieved in education in the past ten years despite the challenges, but we do not stagnate there by repeating the work. The role now is to use learnings from the developments of the recent past and consolidate them through thoughtful and well-planned implementation with added enhancements,” Dr. Pegg said.

Dr. Pegg was joined by Philippine Normal University (PNU) Vice President for Academics and RCTQ Director Dr. Jennie Jocson, a member of the EDCOM 2 Standing Committee focused on Teacher Education and Development.

At the meeting, NEAP OIC Director Dr. Jennifer Lopez talked about how the RCTQ studies guided the Department of Education and NEAP in carrying out evidence-based and practical training programs for DepEd teachers. The meeting was led by Congressman Mark Go, chair of the House Committee on Higher and Technical Education.

Discussing challenges in teacher quality from the DepEd side were DepEd Undersecretary for Human Resource and Organizational Development Gloria Jumamil-Mercado and NEAP OIC Director III Dr. Jennifer Lopez.

RCTQ’s investigation of the roots of the country’s low learner performance led to two more studies—the Pre-service Teacher Development Needs Study (PTDNS) and the Teacher Educator Teacher Development Needs Study (TEDNS) which helped shape current initiatives for standards-based pre-service teacher education.

Also in 2015, RCTQ’s instruments developed for the TEDNS and the PTDNS were used by the World Bank in 2015 when it undertook its Public Expenditure Tracking System-Quantitative Service Delivery Survey (PETS-QSDS). RCTQ assisted the World Bank in assessing the quality of teachers in terms of their content knowledge and understanding of the K to 12 curriculum in relation to allocations of budget.

EDCOM 2 is a national commission tasked to undertake a comprehensive national assessment and evaluation of the performance of the Philippine education sector. (RCTQ Comms)

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SiMERR National Research Centre Director and RCTQ Co-Director Dr. John Pegg described the status of teacher quality in the country and offered recommendations to improve teacher development during a consultation meeting by the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2)  on 25 April 2023 in Pasig City. The meeting centered...
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