TWO SIBLINGS.
The elder, born in 1997, completed grade school in 2010, and high school in 2014. She studied well and gained admission to a prestigious university where she obtained a good degree in computer science in 2018. She has now embarked on her career where she is making excellent progress.
The younger sibling, born in 1999, completed grade school in 2012 and entered high school in June of that year. He studied well and looked forward in 2016.
Oops!
During the summer vacation in 2013, he found that an “Enhanced” Education Act was signed by President Aquino on 15 May. More significantly, he found that the four-year high school course that he had signed up for has been retrospectively converted to a six-year course.
His four-year high school course had been downgraded by name, though not in content, to a ‘junior’ high school course. If he wanted to go to university, which he did, he would have to take a six-year course, four years at “junior” high school, followed by two years in “senior” high school.
The “senior” high school consisted of significant amounts of time-wasting and did not provide him with the two years of academic advancement that he was looking for. Finally, in 2018, he completed six years of high school and entered the same prestigious university that his elder sister had attended.
He also wanted to study computer science and has embarked on this course which is identical to the course his sister had completed.
She graduated in 2018. With luck he will graduate from the similar course in 2022.
He has lost two years. Two years wasted by K-12. Not only is time wasted but so is money. Much is wasted through extra government expenditure.
But as everyone knows, for students to pass through the education system requires considerable parental expenditure. The costs of our public school are not trivial. Brigade Eskwela is not, in all cases, a triumph of volunteerism but there is often also unpleasant coercion from the school to get parents to “co-operate.”
I believe that the crude propaganda necessary to pass a wasteful K-12 system burnt up much of the political capital that Liberal Party had enjoyed when it emerged triumphantly from the 2010 elections. Who knows if and when the Liberal Party will regain that political capital 2022? We shall see.
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Now we find that teacher morale is at a low ebb. They believed that they would obtain significant salary increases. No chance.
A Teacher I is on the government salary grade 1 (SG11) paying a monthly basic pay of P20,754. Not a lot for a single person and many teachers are supporting other family members.
There are 830,000 teachers. Dr Leonor Briones, secretary, Department of Education (DepEd) has done the math and tells us that a P10,000 per month increase would result in an additional P150 billion per annum.
It is extremely unlikely that the 2020 Budget will allocate an additional P150 billion to DepEd. This is because not only are there 830,000 teachers but a huge number of health workers, social workers, and other government administrative officers who would need similar salary advancement as teachers. There must be well over one million government workers on SG11.
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What to do?
DepEd and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) need to reach a tentative agreement as to what the nation can afford to spend on education. This is not to pre-empt Congress who will make final decisions, but should help congressmen to decide what the education budget should be.
It may well turn out that the nation cannot afford the 13 years of compulsory education necessary before students can enter the tertiary level. Pragmatism is required and we therefore need to have a flexible (not compulsory) system where students can go to the next level when they are able to do so and not when the oppressive K-12 Act allows them.
RA 10533 needs to be revised./PN
