EXCELLENCE IN TEACHER EDUCATION LAW

MARIA CONCEPCION M.LANSANG

Officials are planning to seek an inquiry on the status of non-performing Teacher Education Institutions (TEIs) or those that fail to produce passers of the Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET).

This, as the Commission on Higher Education is set to issue a Memorandum Order on the gradual phaseout on two types of TEIs: those that do not perform well in the LET and those non-compliant TEIs or those that do not meet the Commission’s criteria.

In line with this, the Education Commission expressed support to the phaseout of underperforming TEIs, which the EDCOM has been recoomending for quite some time.

The EDCOM said the solution to the 'misalignment' between pre-service and in-service is the excellence in teacher education law, where the Teacher Education Council is empowered to include a bigger voice or a stronger voice to DepEd so that this misalignment and coordination will improve.

According to the EDCOM, they afe just awaiting for the law to be operationalized to the fullest.

In its report titled Miseducation: The Failed System of Philippine Education, the EDCOM II flagged that passing rates in the Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET) have been low, and the quality assurance of teacher education institutions is weak. The EDCOM II noted that between 2009 and 2023, the average LET passing rate for elementary was 33 percent, and 40 percent for secondary.

The Commission added that between 2012 and 2022, 77 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) offering Bachelor of Elementary Education and 105 HEIs offering Bachelor of Secondary Education continued operations despite having consistently zero passing rates in the LET.

-oOoThe author is a Teacher I at Villa Maria Elementary school