Closing the book on Catch-up Fridays

Illustration by Christonette Nuevo

On January 12, the Department of Education launched the “Catch-Up Fridays” reading initiative as part of the MATATAG education agenda and the National Learning Recovery Program (NLRP).

It is meant to address the poor reading proficiency levels in the country. Since 2021, results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have shown that Filipino students consistently scored below the global average in terms of reading comprehension.

Turns out, DepEd’s understanding of the literacy problem in the Philippines is just as poor.

The Catch-up Friday program falls short in addressing the three primary issues in the implementation of the new reading and literacy curriculum: (a) student engagement, (b) lack of competent literacy educators and (c) standardized instructional language.

A culture of not reading

Only months after it began, complaints of absenteeism and lack of student interest have already flooded the feedback forums for the program. 

An Inquirer report on March 7 revealed that attendance during Fridays have dropped significantly, leading the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) and the Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC) to call for its suspension.

This is caused by a growing perception among students that Catch-up Fridays are inconsequential to their learning. After all, proficiency activities on that day are non-graded, therefore, learners are not incentivized to participate.

Creating a culture of reading requires the engagement of students themselves but the catch-up Fridays are designed to encourage the opposite.

Reading more doesn’t mean reading better

This burdens individual educators with the sole responsibility to continually captivate the students with other activities every Friday. However, news articles published as early as March already documented the economic toll of the program to underpaid educators.

More importantly, reading and literacy education requires a teaching approach different from that of other fields. Despite conceptual overlaps, teaching numerical literacy is different from teaching science and reading literacy.

MATATAG curriculum rightfully differentiated language education from reading and literacy education. However, an in-depth understanding of both learning areas is required for every educator to supervise the Catch-up Friday initiative.

To put it simply, not every teacher is a reading literacy specialist. This is also the stance taken by The Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) after their assessment of the program in February:

“It seems that teachers have not been provided in-depth training on how to conduct effective reading intervention [...] while reading classes focus on 'reading' more texts, they do not necessarily help the students improve their reading skills,”

To make matters worse, DepEd laid down no measures and insufficient resources to guarantee quality instruction in the implementation of this reading initiative either. ACT raised concerns about the limited amount of reading materials provided for the project. 

Photo by Christonette Nuevo

One step forward, three steps back

Finally, we must ask the question: what is the instructional language for the said proficiency activities?

The institutionalization of Mother-Tongue Based Multilingual Education (MTB–MLE) in 2009 promoted student inclusivity in the classroom. Its exclusion in the new curriculum is symptomatic of the government’s lack of commitment to promising developments in basic education.

Testament to MT’s benefits, a research commissioned by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2019 showed that selected students from Ilocos, Cebu and Laguna developed literacy skills faster with MT as an instructional language. The same result is echoed in other studies conducted by academics all over the country.

This is not to say, however, that MT is a foolproof solution to the learning crisis. After all, literacy issues persisted well into the MT era. As literacy professor Ma. Hazelle Ongtengco pointed out in her article: learning a language does not automatically translate said language into a learning tool.

The implementation of MT itself is plagued with its own set of problems and criticisms. For instance, there is a meritorious debate on whether teachers are equipped with the skills to handle linguistically diverse classrooms. The country is also behind in the much-needed intellectualization of local languages.

All of these, however, point towards the need for improvement, not removal. The failure of the MT program is a failure of the implementation, not of the concept.

Circling back to Catch-up Fridays, understanding language development in connection with reading and literacy is crucial to the success of this project. The lack of clarification on the instructional language for this initiative adds yet another layer of complexity to its materialization.

Educators should’ve been trained to match their teaching strategies to the linguistic and literacy demands of each student — whether that is MT, Filipino, English or all three — but they were not.

Closing the book or turning the page

As it stands today, the Catch-up Friday program only burdens underpaid and under trained educators with no guarantee of long-term results. This abrupt and simplistic “read more” approach to reading and literacy education offers little to no solutions to the core issues that hinder literacy in the country.

Its goal and purpose, however, remain crucial to the success of NLRP. Perhaps instead of forcing a one-size-fits-all approach to developing a reading culture in the Philippines, DepEd should instead explore strategies focused on mending issues that actually matter.

This includes the optimization of the language curriculum, increasing accessibility of reading materials and training all educators on the principles of language, reading and literacy education.