GRADE 3 pupils nationwide are showing a significant improvement in reading and comprehension, the Department of Education said.

Education Secretary Jesli Lapus said the improvement was observed following the implementation of the program centered on reading and comprehension.

Lapus said the big improvement was noted after results of the March 2007 Reading Comprehension Test for English and Filipino, given to more than 1.8 million public-school pupils throughout the country, came in.

The test results showed an aggregate 22.4-percent increase in their mean percentage score in both Filipino and English.

“We are pleased with the result of the test, that was intended to assess the silent reading ability of elementary-school learners as well as determine the reading performance of schools over time,” Lapus said.

Findings from this year’s test showed an impressive increase in both the English and Filipino components of the examination.

In English, a 19.6-percent increase brought 2006’s mean percentage score (MPS) of 49.98 to 59.56 in 2007; in the Filipino reading comprehensive test, an even bigger increase of 25.75 percent was recorded, from an MPS of 49.21 percent in 2006 to 60.23 percent in 2007.

With the increase in both subjects, the combined 2007 MPS at 60.23 was 22.40 percent higher than the 49.21 percent recorded in 2006.

Equally significant was the increase in the number of schools and students who reached the Mastery, Closely Approximating Mastery and Moving Towards Mastery levels.

Relative to this, there was a marked decrease in those classified under the Low Mastery, Very Low Mastery and Absolutely No Mastery levels.

“The inversely proportional rise and fall of the percentage of schools and students achieving higher and lower levels of mastery confirmed that there is improvement in the ability of our learners to comprehend what they read,”  Lapus pointed out. 

The test also revealed the improved performance of pupils from urban schools in this year’s test as compared with their rural counterparts.

Students from metropolitan areas attained a higher percentage increase from their previous MPS than those from the provinces.

In addition, schools belonging to Third Elementary-Education Project (TEEP) divisions also fared better than non-TEEP divisions.

“This year’s results tell us to work even harder even as we continue with our initiatives to improve the quality of education for our children,” Lapus said.

WEARING white elephant masks to depict the potential character of the controversial national broadband network (NBN) project, members of the Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) staged a picket outside the Senate on Tuesday in time for the blue-ribbon committee hearing on the project won by China’s ZTE Corp. and stressed its debt burden on the Filipino people.

DEFENSE lawyers on Tuesday denounced the alleged deliberate attempt of the prosecution to delay the proceedings in the ongoing court-martial against the 23 alleged core leaders of the Magdalo Group.

THE Supreme Court (SC) has dismissed for lack of merit the letter-complaint of former congressman Ricardo Quintos accusing two Court of Appeals associate justices of “unwarranted haste and unfair treatment” in disposing the appeal of his political rival Jose Villarosa who had been sentenced to death along with two others for the killings of the Quintos’s two sons—Paul and Michael—in 1997.

DAVAO CITY—Senate President Manny Villar Jr. said that only when former President Joseph Estrada has been released from prison could the nation attain closure of its recent troubled political chapter.

EDUCATION Secretary Jesli Lapus defended on Tuesday the cyber education project (CEP) of the department, saying that it will be “a big loss” to the schooling of Filipino students if it were not implemented.

GRADE 3 pupils nationwide are showing a significant improvement in reading and comprehension, the Department of Education said.