QC schools intensify reading proficiency assessment of students
Department of Education-Quezon City assistant superintendent Freddie Avendaño talks to members of media during a forum on Tuesday, June 10, 2024. — Photo by Mary Joy Salcedo
MANILA, Philippines — Department of Education (DepEd)-Quezon City assistant superintendent Freddie Avendaño said on Tuesday that they have intensified the reading proficiency assessment of their students to solve functional illiteracy.
Avendaño said this when he was asked in a forum about the 2024 Functional Literacy, Education, and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS) released in April wherein 18 million Filipinos aged 10 to 64 were deemed “functionally illiterate.”
READ: DepEd says 18M ‘functionally illiterate’ Filipinos cover wider age group
“In Quezon City, we have intensified our reading proficiency assessment up to high school,” Avendaño said.
He said while the Quezon City schools’ reading proficiency assessment program focuses on students from the grades one to three, they expanded the program to cover high school students to account for those who slip through the cracks in the system.
The assistant superintendent of DepEd-QC also said that in assessing the proficiency of the students, they focus more on the reading capacity, rather than on the grades they received on their subjects.
“We don’t rely on grades, not to say that because the grade is high, they can read. So something is being done in the admission, in the enrollment. We look at the reading capacity of the children and those who are identified, those are the ones who are given intervention,” Avendaño said.
He explained that if a student is found to have a reading capacity lower than his or her grade level, “there is profiling that is not made public, which relayed only to the teacher. These students are grouped together so that there can be intervention.”
READ: Crime incidents in Quezon City schools declined in 2024 — QCPD
Avendaño said that the commitment of their reading proficiency assessment program is to ensure that no student would graduate from high school lacking in basic and functional literacy.
The DepEd recently announced that the school year 2025 to 2026 will start on June 16. /das
