BY HERMAN M. LAGON
THE STATE of education in the country is again in the spotlight due to the results of the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2), which expose that 62% of high school teachers teach disciplines outside their field of expertise.
This figure suggests a fundamental weakness in the educational system: the continuous mismatch between teachers’ specializations and their teaching loads. This instructional incongruence has far-reaching effects not only on the standard of education but also on the morale of teachers and students’ future career options.
Teacher mismatch is not a novel problem. Though little has been done to handle it properly, it has been a concern for decades. The EDCOM 2 report exposes the shortcomings of the trifocal education system, in which the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), and the Department of Education (DepEd) function in silos rather than in concert.
The three bodies’ lack of coordination has produced a disjointed approach to education that falls short of teachers’ and students’ needs. Small private schools, where the lack of students and constrained number of teachers force teachers to handle five or more subject preparations, most of which they are not experts in, have even more of this problem. This is especially concerning in high school and early education since specialization is essential.
The distribution of teaching assignments forms the core of the issue. The report claims that DepEd’s practice of assigning subjects depending on availability rather than expertise has resulted in teachers being frequently obliged to teach disciplines they did not major in. This is especially common in science, where more than half of the teachers lack formal knowledge.
Even more concerning is that, within the subset of physics, 49 out of 50 teachers are not physics majors. In these circumstances, students who are deprived of high-quality education suffer, as do the teachers.
Consider the following scenario: a teacher majoring in Physical Education (PE) is given four subjects to teach, three of which are far outside of her area of expertise (chemistry, calculus, kindergarten, for example).
What if a history teacher had to plan biology, physics, and Filipino classes, or if a math teacher was unexpectedly charged with teaching computer science, English literature, and home economics? Think of the effects on the students, who learn from a teacher who lacks the requisite experience or confidence, and the teacher, who finds it difficult to adjust to new material.
Under these conditions, how might the classroom be organized, and how might this impact the direction of education going forward?
The situation is often worse in small private schools since teachers have to balance several courses on top of their administrative and other incidental work due to limited students and sections, which leaves them uber-overburdened and unable to give the particular instruction required by their students.
The teacher-subject mismatch in DepEd, CHED, and TESDA in public and private schools can be mostly attributed to their lack of coordination and immersive empathy for the people in the field. These three organizations are supposed to cooperate to guarantee that the educational system responds to national needs.
Actually, though, there is little to no cooperation between them, who happen to be led mainly by armchair executives. CHED handles higher education and teacher preparation programs, for example. Yet, there needs to be an efficient working system to guarantee that the graduates of these programs find employment in fields related to their degree of expertise. While TESDA emphasizes technical and vocational education, its programs sometimes need to align with the sector’s needs or the labor market’s expectations. This lack of synchronicity or resonance causes some degrees to be overproduced and others to be under-produced, aggravating the mismatch issue. (To be continued)/PN
