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A consensus is forming in Malacañang that the nursing graduates who took the licensure examination in June should take the test again.
Presidential Management Staff chief Arthur Yap on Thursday informed reporters of the consensus after Dr. Dante Ang, chairman of the Commission on Overseas Filipinos who was directed by the President to look into allegations that questions in the exam had been leaked, submitted his recommendations to President Arroyo Wednesday night. Yap said Ang proposed a retake of the exam, particularly Tests 3 and 5, to remove the stigma of the leakage. “We are trying to win back the confidence of the world market, and so Ang proposed that the examinees should retake the entire thing,” Yap said in an interview over Radio Mindanao Network. In an interview on dzRH radio, Ang said he understood the frustration of the nursing students who passed the test but that the leakage issue must be cleared. The nursing board of the Professional Regulation Commission had invalidated the tests on “clinical surgery” and “incremental health” and given the go-ahead for the oath-taking of the 17,000 who passed the board, but the Court of Appeals issued a restraining order. Ang proposed that future nursing board exams be patterned after the National Council Licensure Examination. Yap said the government wants to protect the integrity of the nursing profession, which has been tainted by the leakage. He backed Ang’s recommendation, saying it would be hard to distinguish who among the examinees benefited from the leakage, and it was “not realistic” to expect the examinees who benefited from the leak to admit it. Yap said Malacañang would still look at Ang’s recommendations. Health Secretary Francisco Duque in a radio interview also supported Ang’s recommendation for a retake of the exam and appealed to hospital institutions to be fair to this year’s batch of nursing graduates. Duque argued that nursing students’ rating in the licensure examination should not be the hospital management’s sole basis for hiring them. Students should also be assessed on the basis of their academic performance before they took the board exams. Sen. Rodolfo Biazon has gone a step further and wants the entire exam invalidated. Biazon, who had opposed a retake, now supports it after receiving reports that questions in Tests 1 and 2 were also leaked. “But right now because of another report and another witness is saying that it is not only Tests 3 and 5 that had been leaked but also Tests 1 and 2. So with this additional information I would now support a retake,” he said. Biazon said that the Senate Committee on Civil Service and Government Reorganization he heads will conduct another hearing Wednesday next week to look into the alleged leakage in Tests 1 and 2. The investigation will also help craft a legislation to deal with cheating in board exams such as regulating the review centers by the Commission on Higher Education, he said. George Cordero, owner of the INRESS Review Center and the Philippine College of Health Sciences who had been implicated in the leakage, was also president of the Philippine Nurses Association, which chose members of the PRC nursing board. Cordero has resigned from the PNA. “We need laws. I am looking at the possibility of proposing a law to regulate and control review centers because the result of the hearing indicates that leakage was made through the test centers Gapuz [Review Center] and INRESS,” Biazon said. He has summoned officials of the PRC and the National Bureau of Investigation to the hearing. “Let us see if they will invoke Memorandum Circular 108.” Biazon said Memorandum Circular 108, issued by President Arroyo, was similar to Executive Order 464, which requires consent from Malacañang before any government official can attend congressional hearings. The circular prescribes the “guidelines on appearances of departments heads and other officials of the executive department before Congress.”
--Sam Mediavilla and Ronnie E. Calumpit | 
