The challenges of basic education: dealing with K-12

CONJUGATIONS By Lila Ramos Shahani (philstar.com) | Updated June 15, 2015 - 12:00am

An astonishing number of petitions have been presented to the Supreme Court about a matter that, in the minds of many, should have been settled years ago. I’m not referring to the Bangsamoro Basic Law here or some other equally momentous piece of legislation. I’m referring to the implementation of the K-12 law mandated by the 2013 Enhanced Basic Education Act (RA 10533).

And what is the issue being brought before the nation’s highest court? The question: should our country have the same number of years (12) of basic education as virtually the rest of the entire world—except for Djibouti and Angola? For people who love to roll their eyes and exclaim, “Only in the Philippines!” this puts basic education right in there with divorce. And it would be bad enough if the situation were merely an embarrassment.

In fact, the downsides of our globally outmoded 10-year basic education program are all too real, dumping millions of underage high school grads on our already bloated labor market, requiring three to four effectively wasted semesters of remedial work on the part of our colleges and universities, and, in the larger world, damaging the prospects of the nation’s youth both in foreign universities and foreign jobs.

Though some of the points of the less self-interested petitioners have genuine validity, trying to insist—by court order—that our educational system should cling to its antiquated K-10 mode of operation for even another day are understandable, they remain short-sighted. Does our educational system have problems? Many. Are there rough spots ahead in the implementation of K-12? Without a doubt. Is the transition going to cost money and cause personal and institutional discomfort? You can count on it. But does the preponderance of all these issues combined in any way call for a continuation of the presently inferior K-10 rather than proceeding—even in haste—to the globally accepted K-12 system? Not for a minute.

We can return to some of these issues below, but first we should get an idea of what’s about to happen: Students in Grade 10 are on their final year in Junior High School as they are set to enter Senior High in 2016 upon the full implementation of RA 10533. That makes them the first batch to embark on the additional two years of basic education made compulsory by the new law.

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Despite five petitions having been filed at the Supreme Court to prevent the implementation of K-12, the Department of Education (DepEd) is certain that the new curriculum—which covers Kindergarten, six years of Primary Education, four years of Junior High School, and two years of Senior High School—will enhance the quality of education in the Philippines, and they are equally confident that they are prepared for the pioneering batch of Senior High School students in June 2016. So what exactly is the nature of the K-12 curriculum and how does it differ from the previous 10-year basic education curriculum?

Aside from the additional two years of Senior High School (SHS), the K-12 program totally restructures the basic education system in the country, aiming to provide some solutions to the widespread unemployment of the youth. As Isagani Cruz put it, “The whole point of the entire K to 12 reform is to answer the needs of about 30 million young people (those below 24 years of age) who have not finished Fourth Year High School. Of the out-of-school youth of employable age, more than six million are unemployed, primarily because they do not have the skills that employers want.”

The two years of SHS consists of two parts: Track Subjects—covering the development of skills for immediate employment or entrepreneurship, and Core Subjects—to ensure college readiness of K-12 graduates. It also facilitates four career tracks for students to choose from: Academic, Technical-Vocational-Livelihood, Sports, and Art & Design.

The four different career tracks provide flexibility. Depending on the goals of the student, as well as the community and industry requirements in a particular region, the Track Subject Curriculum enhances the value and relevance of the high school diploma. Equally important, the Core Subject Curriculum,remaining invariable for all schools,provides an opportunity for everyone to be equally well-prepared for a college education academically.

By integrating the awarding of TESDA National Certificates at the high school level, K-12 students—now of employable age upon graduation—would already qualify for decent entry-level jobs. This also increases the financial capabilities of high school graduates who desire to pursue advancement through higher education.

Moreover, the SHS curriculum also addresses the redundancy of college-level general education programs, which presently cover material that should have already been mastered at the pre-university level. This can result in higher education institutions being more focused on the specifics of various degrees, rather that consuming so much of the first two years remedying the inadequate competencies of the old 10-year program.

The K-12 curriculum is the present world standard and would be too difficult, if not impossible, to compress into only 10 years. Globally, the Philippines remains far behind, the only Asian country—and one of only three countries in the world—providing only 10 years of basic education.

Inevitably, there are also downside implications resulting from this shift in the education system.

With the introduction of K-12, there will be an increase in student population, translating into a requirement for 20,000 to 28,000 additional classrooms for each additional year-level; 40,000 to 56,000 classrooms for the two years of SHS.Another pressing issue is the retrenchment of teaching and non-teaching college personnel. An estimated 25,000 are being held at bay.

DepEd, however, says that it has closed the gap of 66,800 classroom shortage in 2010 and has built 86,478 classrooms between 2010 to 2014. This year, an additional 27,499 classrooms are on line to be constructed to cover the SHS implementation in 2016.

DepEd has announced that it will be hiring 39,000 additional teachers in 2016 to meet the personnel requirements of the program. This demand for SHS teachers is proposed as mitigation for the faculty lay-offs in higher education institutions. This is an important point, since many junior faculty look to their teaching careers for funding to pursue higher academic degrees. Thus, the roughly 50 percent cut in pay that comes from the move from college to SHS teaching is particularly bad news.

But, besides student and teacher concerns, there is a third factor: the additional cost to parents for food and transportation expenses to send their children for two more years of high school.

Worsening parental expenses, well over half—5800 out of 7,976—of the nation’s public high schools are set to implement SHS.As a result, DepEd is in talks with 2,000 private education institutions to accommodate incoming seniors that would not be able to attend public SHS schools. The current plan is for DepEd to subsidize the cost of private tuition—but this is one of the most controversial issues around RA 10533’s implementation. Many parents—and others—complain that the proposed subsidizes are too low and will constitute their child’s high school diploma being held hostage to costs they might find impossible to meet. Still others object to giving a taxpayer financed windfall to private schools.

All these complaints are valid. Until recently, our school system has suffered much neglect in many areas, including a chronic shortage of classrooms. Likewise, the almost criminally low pay our public schoolteachers receive is scandalous. There is a very serious loss of junior college teachers as well—many of whom are pursuing higher degrees that will benefit the nation. That they should be forced into lower paying jobs even as they struggle to advance needs to be dealt with—it is an all-too-typical example of how neoliberal pressures such as privatization can gut the aspirations of a developing country and force it into the “race to the bottom” that has become a linchpin of globalization.

Among teachers, there are deep-seated anxieties about the new duties expected of them. DepEd has been conducting numerous teacher trainings to address these concerns, but there is a sense that things remain confused and unsettled. Most likely, uneasiness and suspicion among teachers will linger until the new system is in place and they have a chance to actually work through it and make the needed adjustments. In addition, there still remains the problem of language: what to do with Filipino, how to sustain its place in the curriculum, and what will the changes mean for teaching the language in colleges and universities? For that matter, has the English curriculum been chosen in haste, as some critics allege? What of the adequacy and quality of some of our textbooks and instructional materials? Can schools coordinate better to strengthen job placement for their students?

Likewise, tuition costs for parents whose children have no public SHS available should not hold those students hostage to the financial capabilities of the parents. That is not what we mean when we talk about “public education” as a constitutional right. And, sadly, anytime large sums of government money are being passed out, we come face to face with the ubiquitous problems of potential corruption.  

All that said, I still tend toward proceeding with K-12. The K-10 approach is as problematic as—indeed, is part of—the continued neglect our public educational system has suffered since the Marcos years. It is time and past time to begin making amends.

We should not ignore the serious challenges of shifting to a K-12 program. At the same time, we should seize upon its very real potential to improve the lives of everyone. K-12 is obviously a work in progress that will go through many changes as it is implemented. Top-down planning will invariably be reshaped and modified by bottom-up concerns and existing practices of teaching and learning.What remains imperative is that we provide our youth with all the skills they need, especially education, to prepare them to live meaningful and productive lives. This means, among other things, preparing for the constantly changing demands of the workplace. But they should also be able to question those changes and craft alternatives for a better world. There are many problems to be fixed in education and we should pursue these solutions with zeal. To do so means dealing with the many challenges of K-12 rather than simply putting them on hold.