MANILA – The Senate approved a measure seeking to institutionalize values education, including Good Manners and Right Conduct (GMRC), as a core subject in the K to 12 curriculum.
In a 23-0 voting on Monday night, the senators approved Senate Bill No. 1224, or the Comprehensive Values Education Act, elementary and high school students in public and private schools would be required to take a mandatory GMRC subject for an hour daily.
Under the measure, values education will be integrated into their daily learning activities for kindergarten students after GMRC was removed as a regular subject and was integrated with other subjects, including Edukasyon sa Pagpapakatao and Araling Panlipunan under the K to 12 curriculum.
“The amount of time allotted to values education was inadequate as it did not provide enough time for teachers to engage students in meaningful discussions and exercises on values formation,” said Senate committee on basic education chair and bill sponsor Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian.
SBN 1224 states that values education classes would include clear, distinct, specific and concrete character-building activities such as role-playing in the classroom, community immersion activities, teacher-parent collaborative learning activities, school initiated values formation activities, simulated activities, and other forms of experiential learning activities.
“This will allow students to gain real-life experiences in applying their values to difficult situations, but in a controlled environment where experienced educators will help them process the lessons they learned in a constructive and nurturing way,” Gatchalian said.
The measure also called for a mother tongue-based multilingual education approach to be adopted in teaching values education to make the subject more accessible and user-friendly to students.
The Department of Education (DepEd) will also conduct an annual review of the institutionalization of comprehensive values education in the K to 12 program curriculum to ensure its proper implementation and assess student learning outcomes for the purpose of determining its efficacy.
The DepEd must also establish linkages and provide the necessary support to strengthen parent-teacher partnerships to enable parents to perform their vital role in the effective institutionalization of the values formation education./PN
