MANILA – The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of Republic Act 10533, or the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013, which expanded basic education 13 years.
But Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto stressed Tuesday that what has been commonly referred to as the K-12 program still has a problem – and it is not legal but logistical.
The program was hindered not by legal challenges but by delays in the delivery of classrooms and equipment and the hiring of teachers, Recto said.
Backlogs in school facilities must be addressed while more teachers must be hired so their number becomes “commensurate” to the addition of two years of senior high school, he said.
Still he gave the Department of Education under Secretary Leonor Briones credit “for reducing the huge backlog they had inherited.” “They had to do a lot of catching up and are successful in this,” said Recto.
According to the senator, classrooms, teachers and equipment should have already been in place to receive enrollees in the additional grade levels.
“That should have been the precondition. But the delivery of facilities was behind the curve. Grabe ang backlog na ilang taon ang kakailanganin para ma-wipe out ang mga ito,” he pointed out.
As of July this year 81,630 classrooms, funded in previous years, were still in various stages of construction. These were on top of the 47,000 units to be built this year.
Teacher recruitment was also hit by delays, Recto said. Of the 188,078 teacher items created from April 2016 to August 2018, only 114,019 teachers were hired from July 2016 to June 2018. This year the target is to hire 81,100 teachers.
Another key education facility that suffered a procurement setback was technical-vocational packages, Recto said.
Some 4,600 tech-voc packages were targeted for delivery this year. Even if they get delivered, they “form a small part of a very big requirement.”
“We should remember that K-12’s promise was the graduation of employable high school graduates, many in the tech-voc field, but the absence of teachers and equipment betrayed this promise,” he said.
Moreover, even if the classroom backlog gets wiped out, DepEd will still need 64,668 classrooms to meet the standard student-to-classroom ratio, said Recto.
To accommodate the “annual natural growth” in student enrolment, the DepEd must prepare 10,000 new rooms by school opening.
“Unfortunately, DepEd’s budget for next year provides for the construction of only 4,110 classrooms,” he said. (Senate PR via PNA/PN)
