Grading scheme flagged by Edcom to be reviewed–Deped chief
The Department of Education (DepEd) will review its “transmutation system” that has allowed low-performing students to advance to the next level by adding scores automatically to their final grades, a scheme recently called out by a congressional review body.
Education Secretary Sonny Angara disclosed the plan even as he took exception to the statement made by the Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom 2) that the system had led to a “de facto mass promotion” of students, including those still lacking the required skills.
In a chance interview on Tuesday, Angara said DepEd had no such mass promotion policy.
But he cited “human nature,” mainly on the part of teachers, as a factor why low-scoring students were still being allowed to move up to the next grade level.
Still, Angara acknowledged that there were some policies within the DepEd that “unintentionally” led to the mass promotion of students.
He mentioned DepEd Order No. 8, which laid down the transmutation policy in 2015 and adopted grading rules for the K-12 curriculum.
“There is no formal policy on mass promotion,” Angara said on the sidelines of an event in Tagaytay City.
“There are cases wherein a teacher would also be the student’s tutor once that same student fails. Of course, it’s human nature on the part of the teacher to no longer fail the student.”
“For the transmutation of grades, maybe we’ll have to look into that,” Angara said. “We have to study this because once a student reaches college entrance exams and international assessments, there’s no such thing as transmutation [of grades]. So we have to be consistent throughout the education system, especially on our grading system.”
Under the transmutation policy, for example, a student with a grade between 60 and 61.59 end up receiving the passing grade of 75.
The Edcom 2 report also took note of the difficulty encountered by teachers who had to explain to parents why their students had seemingly passed their subjects, yet their actual skills were still lacking.
