Palace softens on nurse test retake

By Sam Mediavilla, Reporter

Manila Times Internet Edition

Malacañang on Wednesday toned down its refusal to allow a retake of the leakage-tainted nursing licensure examination in June.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said Malacañang’s stand was not “totally no to a retake.”

Ermita said President Arroyo also favors the recommendation of Dr. Dante Ang, chairman of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas, for a retest. Mrs. Arroyo just wanted to spare those who did not benefit from the leak from suffering the same fate as those who cheated, he said.

“Malacañang’s position is not a total retake for everybody, but only for those affected. Don’t punish many for the offense of a few,” he said.

A retest should be held only in areas where cheating had been reported, like Baguio City, Ermita said.

Presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye said Tuesday in a statement that a retest is “unnecessary and unfair” especially for the underprivileged students who labored hard to earn a nursing degree.

But in his Wednesday briefing, Ermita made it clear that the President’s position is that only the passers found by the Professional Regulation Commission and the National Bureau of Investigation as having benefited from the leakage should take the retest.

Testifying at a House inquiry into the leakage, Ang reiterated his call for a retake of Tests 3 and 5 of the licensure exam.

At the same hearing, pro-administration Rep. Jesus Crispin Remulla of Cavite called on the President to reform the agencies involved in the controversy.

The Committees on Civil Service and Professional Regulation, Good Government and Justice conducted the probe.

Ang underscored the need for the examinees to retake the portions in question to redeem the credibility and integrity of those who passed the board.

A total of 17,821 of the 42,006 who took the tests passed.

Ang had said the CFO would petition the Court of Appeals to invalidate the oath-taking of the successful examinees.

He said the computation of the PRC of the results in Tests 3 and 5 was violated the spirit of the law and “put in doubt the competence of the examinees.”

Leonor Rosero, PRC chairman, said the nursing board removed the supposedly leaked items from Test 5 which covered psychiatric nursing. There were 500 items in the exams, or 100 items in each of the five subjects.

“What we did was we removed 90 items from Test Five. Then we got the average of Tests 1 to 4. Then we got the average of Tests 1 to 5. We compared the two results and took the final average,” Rosero told the panel.

She said the PRC has no plans to do a re-take since the problem had been addressed through their computation.

Rep. Ann York Bondoc of Pampanga asked Rosero how the PRC officials came up with the percentage of the questions that have been leaked, and if those who have passed were truly competent as based on the PRC’s “statistical” computation.

“There’s no way to identify per head who benefited from the leakage,” Milagros Ibe of the PRC replied.

Also testifying at the hearing was nursing student Dennis Bautista, who in his sworn statement recounted how the leakage took place.

Bautista pointed at Dr. George Cordero, former president of the Philippine Nurses Association, as the man behind the leakage.--With Maricel V. Cruz