MANILA – Many children are either out of school or have dropped out of school, and the K-12 program is to be blamed, two party-list representatives claimed.
Antonio Tinio and France Castro of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers urged Malacañang to address what they claim as the high dropout rate in schools.
The “ill-planned” and “haphazardly” implemented K -12 program contributed to the rising number of out-of-school children and youth, they said.
Data from the 2016 Annual Poverty Indicators Survey of the Philippine Statistics Authority showed that 3.8 million – or one in 10 – Filipinos aged 6 to 24 years old are not in school.
“Most of them, or almost 3.3 million, are aged 16 to 24 years old who are supposed to be in senior high school or college level already,” said Tinio. “More than half, or about 53 percent, of them belong to the poorest families.”
While the state “brags” about the increase in the net enrolment in elementary and high schools, “there are still millions deprived of their right to education,” he added. “The number of children accommodated in the public school system gets smaller as one goes from kinder to Grade 12.”
Eight percent of Grade 6 students do not graduate while 18 percent of junior high school students do not reach senior high school, the lawmaker claimed.
The 2015 Human Development Report, according to him, showed the mean number of years of schooling in 2014 was only 8.9.
Castro said the government failed to sufficiently plan and prepare for the implementation of the new curriculum.
“More important, it neglects to provide sufficient funding to schools, putting the burden on teachers, parents and students,” she said.
The lawmakers filed House Resolution 1887 seeking to investigate the K-12 program implementation.
They want to know whether or not the Department of Education(DepEd) has a monitoring system to track Grade 12 graduates, noting if they were immediately employed, if they pursued college education, or otherwise.
“The trend of underfunding of our public schools is clear. Maintenance and operating expenses of schools remain insufficient,” Castro said.
“The shortage of classrooms and schools, especially high schools, forces children coming out of four to five elementary schools to be crammed into a single high school,” she added. “This means classrooms bursting to capacity, deteriorating learning and teaching conditions, students eventually dropping out.”
They also asked the DepEd and the Department of Budget and Management to fund the construction of new schools.
“Ultimately, we remind the Duterte administration of its constitutional duty to ensure every Filipino youth’s access to free quality basic education,” Tinio said./PN
