Department of Education Secretary Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara on Friday stressed the need to develop examinations in schools that would match the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
In a Malacañang interview, Angara said school assessments should encourage students to be analytical and critical thinkers.
“I think we need to have more test exams that are PISA-like,” he said.
Angara noted the quality of education in the country should be improved.
He further discussed that examinations should be presented in a way that students can harness their skills and apply them to real-life situations.
“It really goes to the quality of our education because the PISA exam measures very specific type of skills,” he pointed out.
“They present you the situation and you must react to it and analyze it. So, hindi lang siya parang iyong normal exam na ano iyong nangyari itong date na ito o ano iyong cause nito. So they really give you a problem set. It’s a very real-world type,” he added.
Angara expressed his plans to change the culture of assessment and measurement in the Philippine education sector.
“I want to change the culture because we want to have a culture of assessment and measurement, meaning our decisions are not based on what we think or what we feel, but really based on evidence; we measure our outcomes,” Angara stressed.
He referred to these plans as having “more objective tools to measure our education outcomes” and maximizing the use of technology to modernize the sector.
In 2022, PISA revealed that Filipino students are lagging behind in reading, math, and science. The results “were about the same” as in the previous assessment conducted in 2018.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) PISA also conducted its first-ever creative thinking assessment in 2022, where the Philippines was second to the last among 64 countries and economies worldwide. | PND
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