CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – At least 75 percent of the 16,390 first graders who enrolled in this city in 2006, have successfully completed senior high school last month.
They are composed of the first batch of the K-12 graduates coming from Cagayan de Oro under the new Philippine basic education curriculum, said City Schools Division Superintendent Jonathan dela Pena.
Dela Pena also noted a three percent increase in the Grade 12 graduates in the new curriculum, at 76.7 percent, compared to the last batch of fourth year high school graduates coming from Cagayan de Oro under the old one, at 73.7 percent.
Likewise, the education official reported that the completion rate for Grade 10 students in the city has improved from 69.73 percent in school year 2016-2017, to 70.22 percent this year.
Dela Pena attributed the surge in graduation and completion survivals to surge in construction of public classroom buildings in the city.
However, dela Pena also reported that repetition rates in Cagayan de Oro City have increased from 1.15 percent in 2016 to 5.64 percent in 2017 across all levels in junior high. In the elementary level, an increase from 0.46 to 2.52 percent repetition rate was also noted.
Interestingly, only 25.56 percent of the total repetitions can be attrbuted to poor academic performance, he said. The other prevailing factors are: need to take care of siblings (43.9 percent), lack of interest (29.36 percent), illness (18.56 percent), early marriage (14.92 percent) and distance between home and school (9.15 percent), among others.
To counter these problems, Dela Pena said the City Schools Division has initiated the so-called Learner Centered Classroom starting last year.
Using this approach, he said the traditional pencil and paper test would be 20 percent of academic evaluation and the rest would be utilized to "encourage critical thinking.” (Mark D. Francisco/PNA)
