Measuring student performance

Why does it always come as a surprise to us whenever the Philippines scores low in the Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) rating system of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD)? Is there no way of tracking, monitoring and reporting the performance of students nationwide, such that we will no longer be surprised whenever the PISA ratings would come out?

In the latest PISA ratings, the Philippines ranked number five from the bottom with a score of 353 among a field of 81 participating countries and economies. The topnotcher is Singapore with 560 points, followed by Macau with 535 points, Taiwan with 533 points, Japan with 533 points and South Korea with 523 points.

Come to think of it, Macau is not even a country, but how did they manage to score so high? To answer my own question, yes, there are software that are available for the purposes of tracking, monitoring and reporting the performance of students . The software is often called a Learning Management System (LMS), and some versions are in the category of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), meaning that you do not have to pay for anything if you decide to use it, not unless you choose to avail of optional consulting and training services.

Although there could be many ways of measuring the performance of Ministers of Education in all countries, what could be a better measure than the performance of their students in the PISA scores? The appointed Ministers may have all the doctoral degrees to their names, or they could be the most popular persons in their own countries, but what good is that if their PISA scores are low?

Of course, LMS is necessary and I think it should even be required for mandatory use in all school levels. But right now, the more important question is how to improve the test scores of students, so that our PISA rankings will go up. If the students are not learning as they should, maybe the DEPED is not teaching them as they should? What are they doing right, and what are they doing wrong? Since the proof is in the pudding, why not find out? There is only one way to tell.

 

Why does it take 11 years to become an architect?

Is anyone in the two houses of the Congress monitoring and keeping track of the overall impact of several laws as these are passed over the years? Is anyone evaluating whether the overall impact is good or bad for the country in the long run? Or is the Congress passing laws without knowing what short-term or long-term impacts it will have on the lives of the citizens whom they are supposed to serve?

For example, is any past or present member of the House or the Senate aware that it now takes a total of 11 years before a graduate of junior high school becomes a licensed architect? What that means is that anyone who graduates from junior high school at the age of 16 will already be 27 years old before he or she is fully licensed to practice as an architect. To understand what I mean, two years of senior high school plus five years studying architecture in college plus two years of apprenticeship plus one year of review plus one year of waiting for the board results is a total of 11 years. That might not be a problem for the rich families who could afford to wait, but can you imagine how much of a problem that will be for the poor families who could not wait for their children to start earning so that they could be liberated from poverty?

There was a time when architecture only took four years to finish, and there was no requirement for two years of senior high school. At that time, two years of apprenticeship might have been required, but any graduate of an architecture course could apprentice with any architect at any time, even if he or she has not yet taken the board exam. I am sure that our past lawmakers had all the good intentions when they passed all these laws that eventually made it longer for an aspiring architect to start earning money for his or her family. But will the incumbent lawmakers please look into this problem? Why make it difficult for citizens who want to be productive to start practicing their professions?

 

Catching up with the housing backlog

It appears that the government is doing its best to catch up with the housing backlog of about 6.5 million housing units, that is according to their own estimates. But how was the government able to come up with that estimate? Did they base it on actual market demand, by computing the total number of people who could probably afford to buy new houses or condominiums? Or did they base it on the estimated number of people who are homeless?

If it is the case of the latter, what then is the government's definition of homelessness? Are they defining it as the total number of people who do not own homes? Meaning that those who are now renting are technically considered as homeless? Or are they defining homelessness as not having a place to call home, regardless of whether it is rented or owned? If that is the definition, does the government have a criterion of what could be considered as an acceptable home?

In all probability, the building code is not so strictly enforced in the provinces, such that a shanty or a nipa hut could be counted as a home, even if it is only made of light materials. But what about in the metropolitan areas? Could shanties be counted as homes, such that its residents could not be considered as homeless?

In other countries, those who are living in tents or some other makeshift dwellings are still considered as homeless, and I believe we should follow that criterion here. I believe that if we follow the definition of homelessness as it is used in the other countries, the homeless rate in our country would probably double or quadruple, and that means that the housing backlog will also greatly increase.

If that is the case, how could the government catch up with the bigger backlog, since it appears to be struggling with the present targets? Although it is a good goal to lower the homeless rate, assuming that the government is measuring that, I think that it would be better instead to keep track of the poverty rate, because the more people are liberated from poverty, the more people there will be who could afford to buy new homes. By the way, the government does not seem to be measuring housing starts.