12-year basic education: a quality imperative

THE MOVE to expand our basic education to 12 years from the present 10 is not about quantity versus quality. It is about quality, period; or, more accurately, it is about the low quality of our education system. Philippine education is plagued by two major ills—the high attrition rate of our students and their low achievement rates. Simply put, too many of students leave school early, around a third before graduating elementary school, the largest chunk dropping out before Grade 4.

However, those who stay in school are only just a bit better off, receiving a substandard education with more than 90 percent failing our own National Achievement Tests. The majority of students are reading below their age and grade levels; and our high school graduates proceed to college with barely a Grade 6 reading competency.

What accounts for this low quality? Years of neglect; much, much lower than needed budget allocations; teaching quality; incentives and performance measures; the lack of classrooms, textbooks and desks; and, a short basic education cycle. The problems are complex and the causes are interconnected.

While teacher quality is central to the solution, our teachers, no matter how good, cannot teach well in a crowded classroom, without the proper books, or even a proper room. Similarly, our teachers, no matter how good, cannot teach well, with an overcrowded curriculum, when they are being required to teach more than their counterparts anywhere in the world, in a significantly shorter period of time. Nor can our students learn properly, when we are asking them to learn too much, too soon. What students in other countries are expected to learn in 12 years, we are asking our students to learn in 10. Consequently, more often than not, our students are being forced to learn concepts more complex than their developmental profile permits. It is then no wonder that our students cannot read properly nor pass our own diagnostic exams.

Just as the causes are interconnected, so too are the solutions. We must address teacher quality to improve the education of our children. We must likewise address the resource gaps. But we must also increase the number of years in basic education. The lack of years in our basic education cycle is an inherent cause of the low quality of education, just as are all the others. The additional years will unclog the curriculum and will allow the teachers to teach better. More importantly, the students learn more. While each of these solutions is necessary, none of them, on their own, are sufficient; and, we will not be able to address the quality issue without expanding the number of years. There really is no silver bullet.

This brings us to the problem of government resources. It is true that there are limited funds and we must prioritize. However, the difficulty is the opponents of the move to a 12-year system are making this a choice among education goods—better teaching quality versus the expansion or more classrooms versus more years. However, should this not be about quality education versus losing more revenues to smuggling or uncollected taxes; or about education quality versus special education funds being spent on basketball courts, boy scout jamborees or sports fests; or should this not be about education quality versus expensive meals abroad, pork barrel or the intelligence funds of GOCC executives? The families of our children graduating with minimal learning are paying a very expensive price for an underfunded education system.

Ultimately, the beneficiaries of the improvement of our education quality are the poor. For logistical reasons, public school students with low achievement rates or who have not mastered the prescribed competencies still manage to graduate, but they are grossly unprepared to land good jobs and improve their lives. The true social costs accrue not from the additional years of education but from the false hopes arising from a high school diploma that essentially represents little.

The proponents of the 12-year basic education cycle insist that the additional two years be added to the elementary and/or high school levels; not to tertiary education, nor purely as a pre-university requirement. The addition must be to basic education because that’s precisely what it is and where it needs to be. A 12-year basic education is the minimum, fundamental education everyone must receive to have a decent opportunity for a good life. As such, as the Constitution declares, it must be a right, and it must be free.

Finally, ironically, despite all the opposition, the best basic education schools in the country (e.g., Ateneo and La Salle) already follow an 11-year system at least. These are the premier schools that parents would want to send their children to if they could afford the tuition. Children who attend schools like these usually have had three years of pre-school before they even step into the first grade. Yet, for whatever good reason, some would rather deprive the majority of Filipinos of these additional years—please note, a total of 14 to 15 years of basic education—that a fortunate minority already receives. So which program is truly anti-poor? –Chito B. Salazar, Philippine Daily Inquirer

Chito B. Salazar, Ph.D. (pbedmail@yahoo.com) is the president of Philippine Business for Education.