THE DEPARTMENT of Education (DepEd) has identified four areas which need to be examined in order to make recommendations which hopefully would improve the quality of education in the Philippines. This should means that in the not-too-distant future we shall become more globally competitive and thereby perform much better in international comparisons than we do at present.
One of the four areas that DepEd said needed to be reviewed is the K-12 curriculum. We agree.
The Association of Concerned Teachers (ACT) has recently excoriated K-12. It is an open question as to whether K-12 should be modified extensively or even scrapped altogether. The review should allow for these possibilities if it is clear that K-12 implementation has fundamental flaws which cannot be easily corrected. This means that we need substantial inputs from the Legislative branch since RA 10533 would need to be significantly altered. There is room for maneuver since by making changes to the implementing rules and regulations we can address some of the issues which K-12 opponents believe should be addressed.
One of the concerns is the inflexibility that K-12 imposes. Students are not eligible for tertiary education until they have completed 13 years of education. (1 year of kindergarten, made compulsory by the passage of RA10157, then six years of grade school, followed by six years of high school).
I believe that students should be able to attend tertiary education courses when they are able to demonstrate to tertiary institutions that they can benefit from these courses. Some students should be able to meet eligibility criteria by the time they have completed Grade 10.
Two years saved is important for the majority of students who wish to enter the workforce as soon as is feasible.
In the last administration, DepEd said that one of the benefits of K-12 would be that employers would welcome the extra two years of study. In general, employers have not confirmed this assertion.
K-12 has not been fair to students. Feedback tells me that Grades 11 and 12 ‘Senior’ High School is often a rehash of topics covered in Grade 9 and 10 ‘Junior’ High School.
We need an impartial study as to whether the Grades 11 and 12 curricula have been properly addressed. For example, how many students have received a proper grounding in Pre-Calculus topics as mentioned in the SHS STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) curriculum?
Which brings us to the preparedness of teachers to teach Grades 11 and 12. We need radical change if we are to reach international Grade 12 standard as demonstrated in, for example, Singapore and Australia.
Our teachers take a course in education for their training, with a specialist subject, for example Math. I do not believe that this is sufficient to teach a globally competitive SHS course. What is needed is an all-graduate entry in the specialist subject (eg Math) underpinned by a year of topics in education, including classroom experience.
I salute DepEd’s desire to face up to the issues in the achieving quality education. Let us hope the current review will cause us to face up to the problems./PN
