AN EVALUATION OF THE LANGUAGE LEARNING OUTCOMES IN THE NEW ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CURRICULUM OF THE PHILIPPINES

Abstract

This study set out to evaluate the achievement in English and Pilipino of a sample of grade I pupils taught under the New Elementary School Curriculum (NESC) of the Philippines. Equivalent tests in English and Filipino were designed for this study. These were criterion-referenced, multiple-choice achievement tests based on the prescribed Minimum Learning Competencies. The tests comprised of the four basic language skills. The 65 item test for each language subject was first tried out in October 1984 to a group of randomly selected sample of 100 grade II pupils of Koronadal Central Elementary School. The tests were item analyzed and subjected to statistical treatment to determine their reliability. Both tests yielded a higher reliability coefficient of .89. Due to time constraint and the pupils attention spac factor, the rests were reduced to a 35 item one hour test for each subject. The second try out was done in .November 1984 to another randomly selected group of 100 grade II pupils from the same try out school. The tests were again item analyzed. To determine the predictive validity, the tests were compared with the pupils GPA for the first grading period. English correlated highly at .86. Filipino was slightly lower but still significant at .69. The tests for the evaluation phase were conducted in February 1985 to a sample of 640 grade I pupils of the Division of South Cotabato chosen by stratified random sampling based on school type. The tests were marked and treated statistically to get the pupils performance levels in both language tests and their performance by school type. The t-test was used to find out if there were significant differences in their performances. The errors committed by the pupils in every item were tallied and ranked. This was to determine which skills were easy and which ones were difficult for the pupils to master. Findings revealed that the pupils failed to achieve the mastery level of at least 75 % prescribed by the NESC for all subjects. There was also no significant difference in the performance of the pupils in English and in Filipino; however, the central school pupils performed significantly better than those in the barangay schools in both tests. When taken as a distinct group, the central school pupils were found to have achieved the prescribed mastery level while the barangay school pupils did not. The tests were found to be of average difficulty; however, some subskills particularly in reading and writing were quite difficult for the grade I pupils to master.