Against all odds: How public schools of a 4th class city beat Metro Manila

MANILA, Philippines — Two public schools from a small city in Nueva Ecija have just schooled Metro Manila in a nationwide exam.

Despite operating on a shoestring budget, two public schools from the fourth-class Gapan City outperformed over 300 public and private schools in Metro Manila in the latest National Achievement Test.

The numbers tell the story. Both the Gapan East Integrated School and Kapalangan National High School beat over 90% of Metro Manila schools in problem-solving, information literacy and critical thinking.

Nationwide, the two schools achieved "above average" scores in all three test categories, the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) said. 

Gapan East's score of 64.2 and Kapalangan's score of 60.6 in problem-solving beat over 300 out of 342 Metro Manila schools. Both also soared above the national average of 44.1 in this category.

In information literacy, Gapan East scored 62 and Kapalangan 60.1— both well above the 42.8 national average. For critical thinking, Gapan East achieved 59.7 and Kapalangan 59.4, leaving the national average of 40.3 far behind.

This rare win comes from a city operating on just around P9.6 million in local education funds as of 2021. This is 40% below the average for fourth-class cities and 92% less than the city with the lowest special education fund in Metro Manila (Navotas City, with P127 million).

For others, it's a rare success story in a country that has often attributed poor performance to schools' lack of funds. 

For experts at EDCOM 2, it’s a model of what can be achieved when local government, schools division officials and the community rally behind cash-strapped schools.

"If you look at the names of top-performing schools, it's usually the cities with large purses," Department of Education Secretary Sonny Angara said during EDCOM 2's visit to the two schools on Tuesday, October 29. 

"Yet Gapan is doing above average and showing good results with a fairly average budget among cities and local government units... That is an indicator of quality," Angara said in mixed Filipino and English in an EDCOM 2 press release.

The achievement has drawn education experts to Gapan, with EDCOM 2 and