Q. What is a Multigrade Classroom?

A multigrade class is composed of children in several (two to three) grade levels with one teacher for an entire school year.

Multigrade schools are those which have classes that combine students of different ages and different abilities in one classroom. There may also be other adults who assist the teacher depending on how a teacher is able to mobilize parent or community involvement.

In the Philippine public system, classes with two grade levels within one classroom with one teacher are referred to as combination classes. Those with three grade levels are called multigrade classes. Multigrade classes can also be called multi-level classes.

This means that a multigrade classroom involves children of different ages and developmental levels, with different skills and abilities, learning and working together with the guidance and supervision of one teacher.

Q. Where did the idea for multigrade schools come from?

There are multigrade schools in countries of the developing world like the Philippines, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, Mexico, Brazil, and countries in the Pacific Islands.

They exist to provide quality educational services to rural areas. Multigrade schools were actually the first kind of schools in North America. The one-room school house was the most common model of formal educational programs for elementary school children before the 1800s when the industrial revolution brought about large scale urbanization and other changes in the countries of North America.

It was then that single-grade classes were organized to make it easier to manage students as they were divided or classified according to age and grades. The single-grade classroom was already the predominant model introduced to the Philippines by the Americans in the 1900s.

However, early mission schools in the Philippines before the Americans introduced the public school system, which were already organized as multigrade schools. Today, multigrade schools are still considered important in many suburban and rural parts of North America and Europe.

They provide quality educational programs in rural parts of Scotland, Britain, the Scandinavian countries, France, the Netherlands, Canada and the United States. In these countries, the small villages and towns consider the multigrade schools as better alternatives to maintaining single-grade schools.

Q. Why organize multigrade classes when most of the classrooms in both public and private schools in the Philippines are singlegrade classes?

2/3 of the classrooms in the public school system are singlegrade classrooms and this has been the typical classroom since the public school system was organized in the Philippines.

Multigrade classes were organized as a matter of necessity for remote barangays where the number of children to be enrolled could not meet the required number to organized a single-grade class and assign the necessary teachers for each class.

In many cases, aside from the distance of the barrio and the small number of students for each grade level, the shortage of teachers, funds and school buildings were also among the factors that led to the organization of multigrade classes in different parts of the country.

In 1990, the Department of Education, Culture and Sports (now DepEd) started to consider the organization and continuing operation of multigrade classrooms all over the country within the framework of the efforts to provide Education For All Filipino children.

While DECS officials at the national, regional and municipal levels have always recognized the existence of multigrade classes, it is only recently that multigrade classes have been viewed as viable means to reaching children especially for the elementary grade levels in order to provide primary education for as many Filipino children as possible.

Thus, the efforts to address the special needs of multigrade classes and to improve the quality of instruction in multigrade classrooms have begun in the form of investments in training programs, curriculum development and the development of learning materials appropriate for multigrade classes.