DepEd allays fears of schools losing business due to K+12 program

MANILA, Philippines – Education Secretary Armin Luistro allayed fears of private colleges and universities of losing business with no freshmen enrolling in 2016. The first year of a two-year senior high school will be put in place that year under the department’s Kindergarten+12 Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) program, since the schools would be allowed to offer Grades 11 and 12.

Luistro said that private higher education institutions could also establish senior high school and accommodate the incoming Grade 11 students in 2016, and Grade 12 in 2017.

Luistro said that DepEd would conduct an assessment of higher education institutions that would like to establish senior high school in their respective schools.

Tonisito Umali, DepEd assistant secretary for legal and legislative liaison and chair of the DepEd’s technical working group on transition management, said that higher education institutions would have to file permits with DepEd to offer senior high school.

“They can apply for a permit to set up stand-alone senior high schools that will be regulated by DepEd,” Umali said.

Umali said that DepEd is also looking at other options to address the business concerns of private higher education institutions, such as tapping them to accommodate the senior high school students who could not be accommodated by the current 5,000 private high schools.

“We may engage their services, enter into an agreement for a publicly funded, privately provided arrangement for them to accommodate the senior high school students,” Umali said.

“Right now, we only have around 5,000 high schools and not all these schools can accommodate all the senior high school students,” Umali explained. -Rainier Allan Ronda (The Philippine Star)