The Enigma of Dropouts

 

There's probably an ever growing culture that teachers have this notion of not immediately encoding learners in the LIS during the Beginning of the School Year (BoSY). There's actually a lot of reasons for that, but I'll only mention that which I know from experience with teaching and my time with teachers since 2011.

 

Dropouts are like COVID. Teachers don't wanna have it, but somehow get's this idea of not telling everyone about it due to the stereotype of having it. 

You see, dropouts are part of the education phenomena. It happens. Can it prevented? Yes, but not all of it. Simply because there are perennial problems in our society that plays a huge role in producing dropouts. But, why do teachers have this culture of hiding it? 

Well, for one, the systems that dropouts produce are unfair. Whoever manufactured these systems in place may not have had the right people to consult in the realities of our educational truths. 

 

Previously, dropouts are tagged as a teacher factor. Teachers performance ratings were affected by it. Maybe there are circumstances where teachers may play a huge role why a student would stop going to school, but no existing study would conclude that teachers are the only factor. So, why do we evaluate teachers' performance with this entity?

 

Now, they say dropouts were removed as a factor in teacher performance, and yet, the higher-ups require teachers to produce different evidences that they enacted interventions to prevent a learner from dropping-out. So, apart from teaching 360-minutes per day as required by DepEd and CSC; apart from preparing instructional materials, lesson plans, checking of assessments, preparing assessments, completing reports from different ancillary tasks e.g. coordinatorships and special assignments; teachers are tasked to conduct home-visitation to inquire, investigate, intervene (damn, so many I's there) to learners who are already at-risk of dropping out. I mean, isn't that too much to ask already? Forgive me for the term, but that seems to be a bit too cruel. And again (apart from) considering that teachers don't really get additional expenditures in the conduct of these "home-visitations" which naturally comes out of their pockets. All these, and when the student still drops-out, teachers are asked to put it into writing, or at the very least explain "what happened?", "what did you do?", "what could you do in the future to prevent this from happening again?"; for crying out loud, do we still dare ask why teachers don't want to report students dropping-out???

 

And then there's the PBB, the performance-based bonus; where one factor is the OPCRF (Office Performance Commitment Review Form) where school dropouts become an item to measure and evaluate the amount of bonus teachers will receive. The more dropouts, the lesser PBB to receive.

 

Why???

 

If it's not the teachers' fault, is it the school's?

 

Yes, there are so many studies already about the risks of dropping-out, the underlying causes, the mitigating factors, but do we have any of which that conclusively point to teacher factor? Blaming school factor perhaps?

 

In the end, teachers are already underpaid and overworked. Now, they get to be blamed - partially or in full. 

 

When do we get to do something that's evidently pro-teacher? A policy that protects them? People who will definitely look for their welfare and secure it? Many of our programs and existing policies protect our learners, and that's good, but what about the people who are shouldering their future? 

 

It has been a cliche, teaching is the noblest of all profession.

 

Maybe, true, the act of teaching...

But it seems that - teaching is noblest of all profession, but teachers aren't treated with such nobility at all.