Low test scores bother mayor

Cebu City officials plan to meet with the Department of Education (DepEd) regional office to discuss how to reverse the poor performance of public schools of the city in the Filipino Intelligence Test (FIT) last year.

Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama said exam results show that only students from the University of the Philippines, Cebu Normal University and Cebu City Science High School passed the test.

The rest of the 60 schools failed.

Rama said the students’ poor performance in the FIT should not be blamed on extracurricular activities like the annual Sinulog grand parade, which Vice Mayor Joy Augustus Young criticized for distracting public school students from academic work.

Rama didn’t include Young in the meeting with DepEd, saying this problem had cropped up even during Young’s term as the city’s education consultant.

Instead, Rama tapped Councilor Jose Daluz III, head of the city’s scholarship committee and former councilors Manuel Legaspi and Jocelyn Pesquera to attend the DepEd meeting.

Legaspi and Pesquera used to chair the council’s education committee.

Senior high school students take the FIT or psychometric exam, which measures their vocabulary, analogy, number and nonverbal skills.

The exam would help graduating students determine their readiness to attend college and identify what courses they should pursue especially if they avail of the city’s scholarship program.

In the 2011 FIT exam, UP Cebu High School rated “outstanding” with an 81 percent general intelligence rating while CNU got a “very high” rating of 70 percent.

Cebu City Science High School got a “high” rating of 69 percent while Abellana National High School ranked fourth with a 38 percent rating.

“Low average” ratings were given to the Talamban National High School, Busay National High School and Vicente Rama National High School while 14 other high schools rated “below average.” Chief of Reporters Doris C. Bongcac