DepEd’s K+12 timetable too slow, says former education secretary

MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Education’s (DepEd) timetable in implementing the K (Kindergarten) +12 Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) plan, which seeks to add two years to the current 10-year BEC, was described as too slow, with the additional two years of senior high school to be set up only by 2016.

Mona Valisno, former education secretary, said that while the Aquino administration was trumpeting the K+12 BEC program as a vital reform measure to dramatically raise the quality of the Filipino workforce and citizenry, it was apparently not giving the measure much urgency with the timetable drawn up by DepEd for the program’s implementation.

Valisno said that while the K+12 BEC plan was started already this year with the implementation of mandatory kindergarten or pre-school, and the establishment of public kindergarten schools in more than 15,000 public schools all over the country, the establishment of the additional two years of basic education through a two-year senior high school, was only to be started in 2016.

“What’s the use of waiting until 2016? Why wait for 2016 when we can do it now?” Valisno said.

Valisno pointed out that setting a 2016 start for the two-year senior high school exposed the program to the danger of being junked by the next administration that will come in by that time.

“It may be disregarded by the next administration, especially one that is not friendly to the incumbent administration,” Valisno pointed out.

Valisno, who had served the DepEd and the Commission on Higher Education through the terms of Ferdinand Marcos, Cory Aquino, Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, said that the K+12 BEC program was too important not to give urgency and priority to.

Valisno said that with DepEd getting a huge hike in budget this year from P175 billion in 2010 to P207 billion, and the P237 billion it was asking for 2012, DepEd should allocate a portion for starting the senior high schools with a “Grade 11” in 2013, or even 2012.

“They could find ways to fund it so we can start Grade 11 by 2013 or even earlier, by next year,” Valisno said.

Valisno said that the DepEd could tap the private education sector, the private colleges and universities, to offer grades 11 and 12, through a subsidy program.

“Private colleges and universities and even state universities and colleges can convert their first year and second year college classrooms to Grades 11 and 12 classrooms and DepEd can pay these schools for each student that would be accommodated,” Valisno said.

Valisno said that this arrangement can demolish the opposition of some owners of private colleges and universities to the K+12 BEC plan because they will not have enrollees in their first year courses for one to two years.

Valisno said that in her analysis, of the 1.5 million high school seniors that graduate each March, the 1.1 million from public high schools could be made to go on to Grade 11 while some 400,000 bright graduates from public schools and those academically prepared for college among graduates from private high schools could be made to go straight to college. –Rainier Allan Ronda (The Philippine Star)