MANILA, Philippines – The Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) released on Monday, February 9, a list of the top and worst performing teacher education institutions (TEIs) in the 2014 Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET). 

The Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) administers the LET twice a year – in the first and third quarters.

In a new study by PBEd, 12 schools bested hundreds of others with test-taker passing rates of at least 80% for both elementary and secondary LET exams.

These are the top performing schools with at least 250 first-time LET takers:

Silliman University and Saint Bridget’s College join last year’s top 10 schools. 

Poor performers

Meanwhile, 22 schools made it to the list of the worst performers in the 2014 LET. These schools have less than 20% of their students passing the exam:

Two schools were in last year’s list of schools that had no LET passers from 2009 to 2013: South Upi College and Southern Capital College. (READ: Most schools for teachers perform badly in licensure exams)

Nationwide, PBEd identified 1,025 TEIs that offer an elementary education program, and 1,259 TEIs that offer a secondary education program.

The study released Monday jumps off from a 5-year study released in 2014 which analyzed the LET passing rates of the TEIs from 2009 to 2013. (READ: Know the best schools for teachers in PH)

Although the 2014 LET performance of TEIs “generally improved,” PBEd said most schools in the Philippines that offer the education program are still performing poorly.

Poor performers (below the average national test-taker passing rate):

• Elementary LET (average: 62%) – 537 out of 1,025 TEIs
• Secondary LET (average: 58%) – 774 out of 1,259 TEIs

Worse performers (with only 20% passing rate):

• Elementary LET – 111 out of 1,025 TEIs
• Secondary LET – 175 out of 1,259 TEIs

On the improvement of performance, PBEd said “only those in the borderlines between poor, average, and good performers increased their performance.”

“The worse performers, especially in the secondary LET, continue to decrease every year,” PBEd noted.

Although the organization already presented the 2014 study to the PRC and the Commission on Higher Education, PBEd President Chito Salazar lamented that no action has been done since then.

“Ang plano namin, i-elevate na ‘to sa Office of the President… We we want to pressure him [na] sabihin sa PRC na ‘Ano ba? Madali lang ‘to. It’s not controversial, it’s not political, it’s not anything,” he explained.

(Our plan is to elevate this to the Office of the President… We want to pressure him to tell PRC: ‘This is easy. It’s not controversial, it’s not political, it’s not anything.’)

They recommended the following in 2014:

• closure of programs that have consistently performed poorly for 5 years
• a review of LET questions and the teacher education curriculum of TEIs
• possible pre-college screening instruments or standards, such as a national entrace exam for teachers
• availability of each TEI’s LET results to parents and prospective students
• information on LET application forms should differentiate undergraduate degrees from the Certificate in Teaching Program for better performance monitoring
• information from the Department of Education (DepEd) and private school associations on needed majors or specializations of teachers to better balance supply and demand

Salazar said they are already talking to DepEd to “potentially [create] hiring rules” so that public schools get the best teachers in the country.

Like last year’s study, the number of TEIs covered in the recent analysis varies from the number of existing TEIs, because:

• LET examinees used different names/codes of schools
• The information is based on the undergraduate degree of applicants rather than the Certificate in Teaching Program
• Some TEIs were recently closed down by the Commission on Higher Education

To see how your school performed in the 2014 LET, you can download the complete performance table from this page. – Rappler.com

Classroom image from Shutterstock