“Passed” or “Failed” in Time of the Pandemic

In a briefing on school opening made by Region 2 DepEd Regional Director, Estela L. Cariño, on August 19,2020, she said “We might do away of giving honors or ranks as well as numerical grades to students while we are implementing distance learning”.  

With the pandemic, learning will take off on different modalities, and varied platforms. Such transition and drastic adjustments could create discrimination among learners, so it is just imperative to deviate from the normal grading system and the giving of honors or ranks be cancelled for the time being.

The uncertainty of employment, the economic collapse, misery brought by infection or death caused by the virus and the subsequent effects on the family can crisscross the minds of learners, thus, making them out of focus.

The adaptability of learners to the new learning platform; the absence of learning facilitators in the homes can affect the pace of learning, considering that not all learners have the same level of intelligences. Simply stated, not all learners are exposed to the same conducive learning environment.

A “Passed” mark means, the learner has acquired the competencies and has complied with the required performance outputs, while “Failed” mark could mean that the learner has not acquired the minimum competencies or failed to submit required performance outputs.   

A learner may have failed to learn the expected competencies, yet, in a dire situation, he successfully passed the rigors of providing food for his family’s dinner table and has survived the pandemic.  In the end, the “Failed” mark is still a “Passed”.