English blamed for high number of ALS flunkers

ILIGAN CITY — Iligan City Rep. Frederick Siao called on Education Secretary Leonor Briones to reprimand Education officials behind the sudden decision to change the language used in the conduct of the accreditation and equivalency test for the Alternative Learning System (ALS) in November.

In a statement, Siao said Briones herself admitted that the sudden change from Filipino to English contributed to the failure of many ALS examinees.

Siao cited Briones’ March 2 statement, where she admitted that her evaluation showed the test was made more difficult than the previous ones with the shift from Filipino to English for the test questions for Math and Science.

“The negative impact of this was very pronounced in the elementary level examination,” Briones was quoted as saying. —Divina Suson