Fortifying the teacher licensing system
News about the recent September 2025 Licensure Examination for Professional Teachers (LEPT) centered on a security breach at one of the test centers in Mindanao. A contracted Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) examination watcher was caught taking photos of the examination questions and sending them to a review center. He later admitted that this was not the first time he had done it, having done the same during the March 2025 LEPT for a payment of P10,000. That incident showed a vulnerability in the teaching licensing process, which could undermine its integrity.
The LEPT is the sole national gatekeeper for teacher quality, administered by the PRC. Over 1,500 teacher education institutions churn out thousands of graduates per year, and the task of identifying the most qualified to join the teaching workforce has been the mandate of the Professional Regulatory Board for Professional Teachers. By law, the PRBPT should have five members; however, currently, only three PRBPT members have been appointed, and two seats remain vacant. While these three board members are recognized experts in their respective fields within teacher education, they do not represent the full range of specializations under teacher education.
The Teachers Professionalization Act of 1994 mentions only elementary education and secondary education as programs covered by the LEPT. In 2017, the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) released the policies for straight teacher education programs, namely early childhood, special needs, physical, culture and arts, technology and livelihood, and technical-vocational teacher education, but the law has not been amended.
The Second Congressional Commission on Education (EdCom II) opined that this misalignment of the LEPT with test takers’ specializations contributed to the education crisis. It took eight years and the PRC-CHEd Joint Memorandum Circular on the LEPT to allow the development of specialized subtests for these new programs. This positive development further emphasizes the need to expand the current PRBPT composition to adequately represent all these specializations.
A security breach is every high-stakes assessment’s worst nightmare. To prevent the risk of test item exposure and given the tight LEPT development schedule, the PRBPT has chosen not to pilot the test items to be included in the LEPT. Skipping this crucial step in test development could yield outcomes as bad as an examination leakage or a security breach. Test takers who have access to leaked questions gain an unfair advantage over others, while unpiloted test items may unwittingly contain unintended biases against particular groups—whether based on ethnicity, language, or gender.
Hypothetically, the effects of not piloting test items could be worse than a security breach. A security breach may compromise results for a limited number of test takers for a short period, particularly if compromised test items are not reused. However, the absence of piloting embedded in the LEPT test development process risks the inclusion of flawed or biased test items in every test administration, potentially compromising LEPT integrity and putting a large number of test takers into disadvantage over time.
If the LEPT is indeed the gatekeeper of teacher quality and teacher quality is one of the answers to fix the education crisis, then greater care should be exercised in developing and administering the LEPT. The LEPT’s validity will be enhanced when test developers and item writers have expertise in the assigned test domains. The remaining seats in the PRBPT should be filled to include experts from various specializations.
To address the legitimate issue of test security versus test piloting, alternative ways of piloting tests can be conducted, such as piloting the test using a smaller group and performing item-by-item pilots instead of piloting complete test forms. A review of test administration procedures, including recruitment of LEPT watchers and other personnel, will prevent LEPT security breaches. Adherence to sound principles of test development and test administration principles will fortify the integrity of the LEPT as a trusted and credible measure of teacher quality.
—————-
Therese Bustos, Louie Cagasan, and Marlene Ferido are researchers from the Assessment, Curriculum, and Technology Research Program of the University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies. They are authors of a study on the licensure exam for teachers, in support of the work of EdCom II.
