Yes to repeal of K-12 program

THE Department of Education (DepEd), according to an unexpected news item, now welcomes the reported plan of the House of Representatives to review the effectiveness of the K-12 basic education reform program. It could end up in repeal of Republic Act No. 10533 or the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013 that requires 12 years of  elementary-to-high school education.

“Congress and the DepEd have worked closely together since the previous budget hearings to address the issues of the K-12 program,” the DepEd said in a statement published in the newspapers on October 22, 2019.

Chairman Prospero De Vera III of the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) had admitted K-12 defects, such as the stalled implementation of projects and non-provision of salary for project-based researchers.

Kabataan Representative Sarah Elago is at the forefront of the proposal to scrap the K to 12 program because “it is not the answer to the country’s declining quality of education.”

There is no showing yet as to how many congressmen would like to scrap the law.

The possibility of immediate scrapping of K-12 is still remote. In fact, K-12 has already a special P650 million added allocation in the 2020  national budget.

Long before the passage of the K-12 law, this corner had been sounding off objection to it for being financially burdensome to parents and extraneous to students.

I remember my conversation with an Indonesia-based school teacher who came home to escort her daughter while marching up the stage of Rose Memorial Hall of Central Philippine University (CPU) high school in white toga. She was not graduating but “leveling up” to senior high school in the next two years.

But of course, she was as unhappy as her “leveling-up” daughter. They could not understand why the Department of Education had adopted the K-12 program on the pretext of “global competitiveness.”

“When I applied for a teaching job in Indonesia,” she told me, “the school accepted me on the basis of my track experience as teacher here in Iloilo. I was never asked whether I had gone through six years of high school.”

She had hoped that the Supreme Court (SC) would favor the petitioners seeking temporary restraining order against the K-12 program. Unfortunately, the SC dismissed the consolidated petitions in November 2018.

There has been no evidence to show that Filipinos who spend only 10 years in basic education do not succeed.

Today’s college freshmen complain that some of the subjects they take are the same ones they took in senior high school – also known as 11th and 12th grades.

In the pre-K-12 years, each student in each subject got a book, to be returned at the end of the school year for lending to the next batch of the next year. It would be more logical for government to resume this book-lending program than to defray much more money for additional curricula.

There was a time, according to our grandpas and grandmas, when outstanding elementary-school graduates were allowed to teach primary pupils.

When the K-12 law was passed in 2013, drop-out rates due to poverty were already high. Out of 100 students who enrolled in the elementary school, only 58 made it to high school. Of these 58, only 33 enrolled in college but only 14 finally graduated.

The job market does not look for graduates who have spent more years in high school but for those who have earned skills. Filipino seamen, for instance, are in demand abroad because they work more efficiently than other nationals. (hvego31@gmail.com /PN)

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