Length of school cycle and the quality of education

by Abraham I. Felipe1, Ph.D. and Carolina C. Porio2 Abstract The relation between length of formal schooling and quality of education was studied using TIMSS-published data and UNESCO information about the educational cycles of TIMSS-participating countries. The study was done to provide information relevant to a recommendation to lengthen the cycle of Philippine education. Three types of evidence were presented graphic data in the form of charts, chart data converted into a form that may be analysed using simple quantitative methods, and regression. Evidences consistent with the recommendation from the charts and their quantitative analyses were few, ambiguous and very weak. In contrast, evidence from the regression studies showed that lengthening the pre-school sub-cycle (but not the elementary or high school sub-cycles or the combined basic education cycle) led to better test performance. All the same, the researchers did not interpret this finding to mean an endorsement of a simple mechanical adding of calendar time for pre-schooling, as some proponents of a 12-year cycle advocate. Instead, they interpreted the variable length of pre-schooling as a surrogate for several factors and measures that usually accompany a serious effort to improve the educational system. As a whole, no convincing evidence was found to justify the recommendation to lengthen the cycle. Keywords: TIMSS, Philippine education cycle, UNESCO levels of education, Philippine educational reforms, New Philippine Education Highway

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INTRODUCTION The present report is a comparative study of the relation between length of formal schooling (school cycle) and what Philippine media has called quality of education. It was prepared to be relevant to a discussion of the desirable length of the Philippine school cycle, views on which were sought by some quarters from candidates for the May 2010 presidential elections in order to assess their qualifications and readiness to lead the country as president. Important educational personalities had formed strong views on the topic even when the basis for such views had been scanty. Anecdotal reports of entrepreneurs promoting or using Filipino manpower have been an only regular source of proof of the deteriorated quality of the countrys educated labor force. The purpose of this report is to present facts and data for a more intelligent discussion of the issue. The results of recent comparative testing in science and mathematics of students from various countries (TIMSS) have contributed to an over-reaction to the quality of Philippine education. Briefly, TIMSS has contributed to the conclusion that its quality was poor. This conclusion is, of course, misleading. To begin with, all that TIMSS studied were test scores. It did not study such things as teacher preparedness and teaching practices, coverage of instructional materials, student creativity, the societal value of student behavior, or items of character and breeding such as dignity, decency, culture, self-control

and others that many consider material to appreciating whether a person has education (educado, or may pinag-aralan, well-bred) or none (mal educado, or walang pinag-aralan, a boor). Each of those matters is, arguably, a legitimate aspect of education. Be that as it may, this paper will proceed to examine what TIMSS has about educational cycles, particularly the 12-year cycle which is presently of matter to Filipino policy makers. In all three (out of four) international comparisons wherein the Philippines participated, the Filipino test scores were close to the bottom. For example, in the fourth study (studied in detail for this report), Filipino children in Grade 8 [3] were third from the bottom of 41 participating countries; the Philippine 4th graders were also third from the bottom of 25 participating countries. The results on Filipino school children when scores were analysed test-wise (seven tests for the 4th grade and nine tests for the 8th grade) were similarly low. The seven tests for the 4th grade were Patterns and Relationships, Measurement, Geometry, Data, Life Sciences, Physical Science and Earth Science. The nine tests for the 8th grade (the equivalent of the second year high school in the Philippine system) were Algebra, Measurement, Geometry, Data, Life Sciences, Chemistry, Physics, Earth Science and Environmental Sciences. Those who have looked into this matter, including a recent task force created by former President Arroyo, have also noted that the Philippine educational cycle is very short. Of the 41 TIMSS countries with available information on their educational cycles, the Philippines had the shortest cycle (a total of 11 years, including one year of pre-schooling, whereas 11 of those 41 countries have as long as 16-year cycles). This, said one proponent of a 12-year basic education curriculum, is simply not enough: it is like cramming 12 years of lessons in 10 years of studying. That, he concluded, is the reason for the Filipinos non-competitive mastery of science and mathematics (and other school subjects). Up to this time, the relation between the performance on TIMSS and the length of the educational cycle has not been studied properly. Claims about performance and cycle length have only been impressionistic and often erroneous. This study will assess these claims more methodically using data from the TIMSS.

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METHOD A file for each TIMSS-participating country was constructed, consisting of the countrys mean TIMSS test scores and the corresponding UNESCO data on educational cycles. The test data were taken from the summary statistics report of the TIMSS International Study Center, Boston College, the center of TIMMS studies.[4] The UNESCO data were taken from its website[5]. A Total Test Score for 4th grade and another for 8th grade (the equivalent of the second year of high school) were added, yielding eight 4th grade scores and ten 8th grade scores to analyze. Findings are reported below in three forms. The first form, consisting of graphic data (charts), is suitable to visual inspection and appreciation.

The second form started with the charts reduced into forms that can be analysed quantitatively. For simplicity the charts were reduced into 22 contingency tables. There are established rules for making inferences from such tables that can be used to assess if sub-cycle length is related to test scores. These established rules were the rules used in this study. The third form, regression, is more complicated. It consists of a system for assessing which of several possible causes (variables) is (are) responsible for the observations of interest. In the TIMSS case, the observations of interest were the TIMSS test scores. The explanatory variables were the lengths of the pre-school, elementary, and high school subcycles. This way, the analyses also become relevant to various proposals to lengthen preschool, elementary, and/or high school phase(s) of basic education.

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FINDINGS The charts: graphic evidence The use of charts as evidence of any relation between the length of a sub-cycle and test scores is illustrated in Figures 1 and 2. Figure 1 shows the relation between length of the pre-school sub-cycle (horizontal axis) and standardized Total Test Scores (vertical axis) for 8thth graders. Each endpoint in the figures is a countrys mean standardized score in the test. graders. Figure 2 is the comparable chart for 4 In each figure, a countrys mean score is referred to the centroid which is the mean of all test scores at the mean length of the sub-cycle of all TIMSS country participants.

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In Figure 1, the lower left-hand corner is the region for low performing countries with short pre-school education sub-cycles[6]. Note that the Philippines is somewhere in the lower left hand corner but is appreciably higher than South Africa which is the lowest. Note also that a short pre-schooling does not condemn a countrys 8th graders to dullness. South Korea has

the same length of pre-schooling as the Philippines but is one of the top performers in TIMSS. At the same time, other countries had longer pre-schooling (e.g., Ghana, Morocco, 2 years; Botswana, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, 3 years) but lower TIMSS scores. In the comparable chart for 4th graders (Figure 2), one can note similar observations. South Korea (the topnotcher for 8th graders) did not participate; hence, its 4th graders had no TIMSS records. Australia had a respectable TIMSS score even if it has only one year of preschooling. On the other, Morocco (2 years of pre-school), Norway (3 years) and Armenia and Slovenia (both 4 years) had lower scores than Australia. Long sub-cycles have been believed to contribute to higher achievement. This notion is clearly wrong in the cases of elementary cycle data. In Figures 3 and 4, the test scores of the Philippines which has a 6-year elementary cycle was lower than the test scores of all 13 countries with shorter elementary cycles (Russia, Armenia, Latvia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Italy, Egypt and Iran). The only exception was the case of 8th grade tests for Palestine. Differences between any two countries could be tested for statistical significance by anyone because Boston College, the center of TIMSS studies, published the standard deviations and standard errors of each countrys scores. Significance tests were no longer done for this report, however, because the added work entailed is not compelling for the papers arguments.

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The report that the test scores of students from Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong were way above those of comparable American students (see Figures 7 and 8 below) has elicited embarrassed reactions among many American politicians, professional and citizen groups and media. What has rankled them was the middling performance of

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American students, especially in the light of what are already known about the language of testing as a determinant of test results and the fact that the tests were in English wherein native speakers of English already enjoyed an advantage. They are rankled too by the findings on Singapore and South Korea whose educational cycles are only 13 years long as against the Americans 15 years. The superior performance of Japan and Hong Kong can at least be partly explained away the education cycle of Japan is as long as that of the United States (15 years) and Hong Kongs is longer (16 years.) As for the Philippines, a scrutiny of the 72 charts would show her repeatedly ending up at or near the bottom. This observation seems to have been the sole basis for the proposal to lengthen the Philippine education cycle which absorbed a major blame for the results. Considering the findings from other countries, however, attributing the results to the length of the Philippine cycle is neither objective nor correct. The evidence is clear and irrefutable: some countries have short sub-cycles but have high scores; other countries have long subcycles but have low scores. 22 contingency tables To get more information, each chart was virtually quartered by, first, dropping a perpendicular through the centroid onto the x-axis and then, second, drawing a line through the centroid parallel to the x-axis. By this means, each chart was effectively divided into four more or less equal quadrants[8], with the crosshairs of the intersecting lines set at the centroid. This reduces each chart into a 22 contingency table for which there are established rules for making inferences when assessing if sub-cycle length is related to test scores. Table 1 below illustrates the model 22 contingency table that results from quartering a chart.

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In general, one would say that an association between length of sub-cycle and test scores exists if the cases are preponderantly in the diagonals. The established rules pertain to what constitute preponderance when one wants to rule out randomness 95 or 99 times out of a hundred, or 995 or 999 times out of a thousand, or some other numerical criteria. A statistic is computed and evaluated for statistical significance.

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It was deemed reasonable to first analyse any effects of the cycle by its identifiable separate segments. Procedurally, this entails isolating a segment (e.g., the pre-school segment, the elementary segment, or the high school segment as the UNESCO does) and then evaluating its effect on test performance. One consequence of this procedure was to make the analysis relevant to various proposals to lengthen a sub-cycle such as the proposals to lengthen pre-schooling, add a year to elementary education, add a bridging year before high school, or add another year in high school, as the case may be. To round up, all segments were re-combined into one total pre-university (pre-college) cycle for analysis. Finally, it was decided to put back the segments together again and study which of them singly or in combination accounted for the observed effects. There will be more on this method later. But first, the analyses by segments. Table 2 contains the outcome of quartering the charts on pre-schooling. The findings on 4th grade tests are grouped separately from those on 8th grade tests. The cells (A, B, C and D) in Figure 9 are presented as just one row in order to save space. The statistic for evaluating significance is Chi Square. Column p represents a Chi Squares significance level; ns means non-significant.

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Note that of the eight (8) 4th grade tests, the long pre-school sub-cycles were related to higher scores in only two cases (i.e., 2:8). In contrast, long pre-school sub-cycles were related to higher scores in eight cases (i.e., 8:10) of the ten 8th grade tests. The findings about the elementary school sub-cycle were different. In Table 3, none of the eight 4th grade tests (i.e., 0:8) or of the ten 8th grade tests (i.e., 0:10) was significant. It made no difference whether the elementary school sub-cycle was long or short; length of elementary school sub-cycle was unrelated to test results.

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The findings on the length of the high school sub-cycle (Table 4) were different from those on elementary sub-cycle. They were more like those on the length of pre-schooling. Comparing the pre-school and high school sub-cycles, two of eight 4th grade tests reached significance (i.e., 2:8) when pre-school sub-cycle length was used; none of the 4th grade tests (i.e., 0:8) did the same when the high school sub-cycle was used. However, with 8th grade tests, eight of ten tests (i.e., 8:10) reached significance.

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Based on the results of the 22 contingency table analyses, the 8th grade (high school) test results were more predictable than the 4th grade (elementary) test results when using the length of sub-cycles as predictors, except when using the elementary sub-cycle (in which case, performance could not be predicted). Regression Strictly speaking, the 22 contingency table is only a model for establishing association between two variables, not a model for predicting one variable (the dependent variable) from one or more other variables (independent variables). It is regression that performs the prediction function. Strictly speaking, regression is the more appropriate tool to test the consequence of the proposals to lengthen the education at various segments preschooling sub-cycle, elementary sub-cycle, high school sub-cycle or even later. It could help evaluate which individual sub-cycle, or which sub-cycles in combination is (are) responsible for the test results. However, while regression is, structurally, appropriate to address the proposal to lengthen the education cycle, its application could also be questioned. First, the case when its use is proper. The use of regression to determine whether the preschool sub-cycle affects the results of elementary and high school tests is a proper application. So with the case of determining whether the length of elementary sub-cycle affects high school test results. Both cases involve an earlier event and later effects. Second, the case when its use could be questionable. The use of regression to determine if the high school sub-cycle is related to grade 8 and grade 4 test results, or the case of the elementary sub-cycles affecting 4th grade test results, are cases of questionable use. Both cases involve causes that happened or were completed after their alleged effects. If regression was still employed in this study even in cases of questionable applications, it was only because those who propose lengthening the education cycle invariably quote the TIMSS results as supporting evidence. The use of regression can at least show if the mathematics of statistical prediction supports their proposals. The mode of prediction that was used consisted of evaluating simultaneously the role of three predictors (lengths of pre-school sub-cycle, of elementary sub-cycle and of high school sub-cycle) in predicting test scores. In that way, the analyses become relevant to the different proposals to lengthen the school cycle. In the actual processing, however, it adopted a rule that could lead to having no report about a specific sub-cycle. The procedure was as follows: it first adopted a criterion for accepting that a sub-cycle could have a significant effect (namely, an F statistic with a p.05). After that, it considered the next best sub-cycle and accepted to process it if it could meet the p.05 criterion. Otherwise, it would reject that sub-cycle and stop processing. As a result, this mode of regression (stepwise) might not have anything to say about a sub-cycle. In that event, it only meant that the procedure judged that that sub-cycle had no significant effects. Table 7 is the summary of the regression analyses. The dependent variable (the TIMSS test scores) are listed on the first column. The 4th grade tests are listed separately from the 8th grade tests. The second column identifies the independent variable (sub-cycle) which turned out to be statistically significant. Note that only the pre-school sub-cycle had been significant (in 15 of 18 regression analyses). There was no instance when the elementary or the high school sub-cycle ever reached significance. The amount of variation in test scores that was explained by the independent variable (column 2) is R2.. The magnitudes of R2

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reported in Table 6 are very respectable. Note that as a whole, more variance in 4th grade tests is explained than in 8th grade tests, i.e., scores in the former tests could be predicted better. This makes sense: the 4th grade is closer in time to the pre-school sub-cycle.

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DISCUSSION As a whole, there is no clear empirical basis in TIMSS to justify a proposal for the Philippines to lengthen its education cycle. Evidence from the charts Just using the naked eye, a scrutiny of chart data does not intuitively support the proposal to lengthen the cycle. The distribution of test results does not follow a clear rule. Some countries with short cycles had high TIMSS results; others with long cycles also had low TIMSS results. Earlier, details about the test scores of Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, the United States and many other countries have been highlighted in order to illustrate this point. To paraphrase an earlier statement, a short pre-schooling does not consign a countrys school children to dullness. The only predictable thing about the

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Philippine results is that they are at the bottom of one test pile after another test pile. But the piles do not arrange themselves by some coefficient of cycle length. There are more reasonable explanations for the Philippine outcome. As an action plan to improve Philippine education, lengthening the cycle has no justification from TIMSS. That solution is difficult and expensive, with uncertain effect on quality. There are other less expensive and more realistic solutions whose outcomes are less uncertain. Evidence from the 22 contingency tables A more methodical analysis of the distribution of country scores using 22 contingency tables suggests that length of education cycle is related to test scores in some but not even in most cases. Table 6 shows significant positive relations between sub-cycle length and test scores in 24 out of 40 cases involving 8th grade tests, but only three (3) out of 32 cases involving 4th grade tests). This success ratio may justify a proposal to lengthen the cycle because it is more difficult to reject statistical null hypotheses than to accept them. However, the results were ambiguous as to which sub-cycle is more important to lengthen. Evidence from the use of regression The regression analyses yielded very important findings. In the 18 instances of predicting test scores (8 elementary and 10 high school scores), lengthening the elementary and high school sub-cycles did not result to higher scores. However, lengthening the pre-school cycle repeatedly led to higher scores (in 15 out of 18 instances (Table 7). Table 7 also shows that lengthening the pre-school sub-cycle affects 4th grade scores more than 8th grade scores. Liberally interpreted, this finding says that it is lengthening the pre-school sub-cycle, rather than the other two, that is more important. Interpreting the Regression Findings However, one should be careful with such a liberal interpretation. The data could be misleading. Lengthening the pre-school is not a simple endorsement of a new Head-start program[9]. This misinterpretation should be avoided. It is generally accepted that the usual superiority of head-starters at the beginning of formal schooling is only temporary and easily overcome in time, especially in content areas such as reading, numbers and science. This wellknown fact in pre-school education is not the same as the findings in the present study. In the present case, the impact of lengthening the pre-school sub-cycle is in fact on content areas like algebra, physics, chemistry, and other school subjects. It is obvious that pre-school in the Head-start sense is not the same as pre-school in the present study. The variable pre-school sub-cycle in the present study, which appears very important in explaining the TIMSS results, is not a mere time period in a childs life. That is the sense in the concept of Head-start, but not here. The concept here is one that can help explain why countries that give importance to their pre-school phase tend to have better standing in high school science and mathematics. It must be able to explain why a country like South Korea with only one year for pre-school could have one of the highest grades for 8th grade (refer to Figure 1), and why countries like the Philippines with 6-year elementary sub-cycles

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would have test scores far lower than countries with only 3-, 4- and 5-year long elementary cycles. The connection between lengthening the pre-school sub-cycle and high grades is not clear on surface. It becomes clearer when lengthening is not just equated with the process of superficially mechanically adding years or lengthening a calendar, per se. The deeper meaning of lengthening the pre-school sub-cycle refers to a mix of several factors that enable a state to start teaching earlier, better and/or longer. A longer pre-school is just surrogate of a number of these factors. First, these factors include a strong economy, for a strong economy is needed to support a government-run pre-school system over a longer cycle. A strong economy is pre-requisite to having specially developed teaching materials and facilities. It is pre-requisite even when pre-schooling mainly depends on the private sector only. Second, these factors include a culture that values lessons (i.e., the pre-school curriculum) that are first closely studied and tested, in contrast to unsystematic practices of training children such as when they are merely left to yayas. This implies a cadre of teachers who specialize in pre-school education. It implies a certain compensation level that could ensure the maintenance of that cadre. Countries that have the capacity to support their pre-school sub-cycle adequately will also tend to have the capacity to support the other sub-cycles adequately. This is the reason for the dominant role of the pre-school sub-cycle in an inter-country study such as this. It indicates the importance of a capacity to give children quality learning experiences and opportunities. Adding years in the cycle when not supported by resources financial, technological, manpower, technical, cultural will only be a waste of time. A colleague reviewing the present paper repeated a widely used clich it is the quality of learning experience that makes the difference, not the length. An actual case of lengthening a sub-cycle which was not followed by the improvement that was expected: the Philippine case In the Philippines, there have been indications that adding more years may just be a waste of time and resources. Thirty-four years ago, the Department of Education of that period already reported that Grade 6 pupils, apparently (as measured by achievement tests), knew just a little bit more than grade 5 pupils (Survey of Outcomes of Elementary Education, or SOUTELE, 1976). In 2004, or 28 years later, it was reported in a study involving 96 schools in Metro Manila and Region 4, that grade 6 pupils had less competencies than grade 5 pupils in tests of learning competencies (Felipe, 2006). Apparently, after a lapse of thirty years from SOUTELE of 1976 to the 2006 report, Grade 6 (the additional academic year after Grade 5) was not making pupils more competent. Instead, it was making them worse, competency-wise. This is an actual illustrative case showing that adding years (i.e., lengthening a sub-cycle) may not add but, paradoxically, even reduce school competencies. An extraneous consideration The rationale of the proposal to lengthen the educational cycle in the Philippines is really driven by a purpose more complex than a plain need to improve the quality of Philippine education. It is compounded by extraneous considerations in international relations. As a result of the increasing traffic in student exchanges among countries, a system of establishing academic equivalence has become useful. In addition, the flow of technical manpower will continue to rise for the foreseeable future, calling for a multi-country

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certification process. There have been initiatives for cross-country student exchange and manpower placement systems. These systems will gain from a more standardized educational cycle. In Europe, many countries have already agreed to standardise the time allocated for teaching certain school subjects. In the ASEAN, there is an initiative to reduce the variability in cycle length and accomplish this by a certain target year. In planning the new educational highway for the Philippines by the previous Arroyo government, there were indications of a Philippine interest to comply, regardless of the cost and the uncertainty of the outcome. This could be the reason why the views on the matter were sought from the candidates for the 2010 presidential elections. Some final words Based on the present study, there is no basis to expect that lengthening the educational cycle, calendar-wise, will improve the quality of education. The strong message in this study, namely, that it is lengthening the pre-school sub-cycle that will be the step to take in order to improve quality, needs more comments. One cannot just continue lengthening pre-schooling from kindergarten down to the period for oral and anal training because of sheer limits of time. Further, nothing is known about the relation of experiences during these early periods to competence in mathematics and the sciences, which are the subject of TIMSS. The importance of the pre-school sub-cycle is better interpreted to mean the presence of a strong economy and the value and support for good teaching. The issue of lengthening the education cycle, of course, is important because it is a real issue for the Philippines in its international relations, it is a salient issue at the higher echelons of Philippine government, it is currently a policy issue for the country, and some proposals on how to resolve it may cost the country much. The value of the 12-year cycle is ultimately a matter of weighing the large and certain costs against the uncertain gains in lengthening the education cycle. However, one can adopt a guideline in weighing these costs and gains. One such guideline may be that individuals who are inconvenienced by non-standardised cycles should be the ones to bear the costs of reducing those inconveniences. People in the farms and small barangays should be spared the burden of a system that will not benefit them. The government could help those interested in foreign studies and work placement by supporting an appropriate system of assessment, rather than tinker with the whole cycle length. This solution addresses the alleged problem in a more focused way and does not indiscriminately impose on every Filipino the costs of meeting the needs of a few. Many educators seem to expect too much of the 12-year educational cycle. More likely, lengthening the cycle is so concrete a step that it gives them the feeling they are doing something about a faulty system. A friend who learned of the plan to adopt this proposal was reminded of the following Howie Mandel joke: My wife does not know how to cook. So she went out and bought herself a microwave oven. Now, she does not know how to cookfaster! If the plan is hastily adopted, pretty soon the problem would be how to cut short a poor quality 12-year cycle.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the following staff of FAPE: Roderick Malonzo, Edith Ocado, and Allan Sarion, for collecting, organizing, encoding and helping process data and Lani Ty for editing the statistical outputs.

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REFERENCES

1. 2. 3.

EDPITAF (1976), Survey of the outcomes of elementary education, (SOUTELE), Department of Education, Manila Felipe AI (2006), Unexpected learning competencies of Grades 5 and 6 pupils in public elementary schools: a Philippine report, International Education Journal, 7(7), 957-967 TIMSS International Study Center, Appendix and summary statistics and standard errors for proficiency in mathematics and science, In: Lynch School of Education (2008), Highlights from TIMSS 2007: mathematics and science achievement of U.S. fourth- and eighth-grade students in an international context,, Boston College, Boston. pp.486-503 www.uis,unesco.org/template/pdf/gea/GED_EN.pdf

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ENDNOTES [1] Corresponding author, abefelipe@aya.yale.edu [2] Executive Director, FAPE; carolp195@gmail.com [3] Hereon, Grade 8 will be referred to as 8th grade and Grade 4 as 4th grade. [4] Appendix and Summary Statistics and Standard Errors for Proficiency in Mathematics and Science, published by Boston College. [5] www.uis,unesco.org/template/pdf/gea/GED_EN.pdf [6] In the UNESCO terminology, the pre-school level in the Philippines is called ISCED 0 or pre-primary; elementary level is ISCED 1 and the high school level is ISCED 2. In the present text, the authors refer to them as the pre-school, elementary and high school subcycles, respectively. [7] For lack of space, the test-specific charts are not printed in this report but those interested may view them at the FAPE Library. FAPEs address is 7/F Concorde

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Condominium Bldg., cor. Legaspi-Benavidez Sts., Salcedo Village, Makati City; MCC PO Box 2144 Makati City 1229 [8] There was imprecision in estimating the centroid due to lack of data about some countries. [9] Being administered by the ECLKC (Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center), US Department of Health and Human Services

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

ABRAHAM ABE I. FELIPE is an educator and social scientist who served as Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports (now DepEd) from 1979 to 1986. He served as President of the Fund for Assistance to Private Education (FAPE, 1974 to 1992) and the Private Education Retirement Annuity Association (PERAA, 1976 to 1987). He founded the Center for Educational Measurement (CEM) and served as its president from 1976 to 1988 and chairman of its board from 2001 to 2004. At FAPE, he led the advocacy for government support for the private education sector. He is credited for conceptualizing the educational service contracting (ESC) program, a Philippine variation of educational vouchers, which was legislated as part of the Government Assistance for Students and Teachers in Private Education (GASTPE, or RA 6728). He was instrumental in getting existing national accrediting associations to form the Federation of Accrediting Associations of the Philippines (FAAP) in whose board he served for several years. Since 2003, he has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Network of Quality Assurance Associations (NNQAA). He brings with him solid experience in managing educational institutions.

CAROLINA C. PORIO is the Executive Director of the Fund for Assistance to Private Education, the agency that provides assistance to private schools in the country. She has committed 35 years of her professional life in the service of private education in the Philippines, serving in various capacities as Classroom Teacher, High School Principal, Graduate School Faculty, Masteral Program Director, and Graduate School Registrar of the De La Salle University, where she earned her M.A. in Educational Management.

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As Chief Executive Officer of FAPE since 1998, she manages the implementation of the Educational Service Contracting (ESC) scheme and the Education Voucher System (EVS) programs, which are now worth Php4.5 Billion. She also runs FAPEs scholarship programs that have helped over 4,000 teachers earn their masteral or doctoral degrees and assisted over 30,000 teachers in earning non-degree programs. She helped conceptualize and implement FAPEs research projects and the design of its annual In-Service Training programs for private high school teachers and school administrators in 15 regions of the country. She is also instrumental in the establishment of A TEACHER organization, which is now represented in congress as a partylist. A strong advocate of education for peace and sustainable development, she exemplifies the lifelong learner who is fascinated by innovations and research findings that promote better performance in the teaching-learning process. Filed under: Proposed K+12 basic education cycle | Tagged: New Philippine Education Highway, Philippine education cycle, Philippine educational reforms, TIMSS, UNESCO levels of education

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