Blueprint for K+12 program incomplete

SEN. Antonio Trillanes 4th on Thursday called on the Senate to investigate the enhanced K+12 basic education program of the Department of Education (DepEd), saying that it would only worsen problems facing the country’s education sector.

His call came after Education Undersecretary Tonisito Umali admitted recently that the blueprint for the program has not been completed.

In a privilege speech, Trillanes described the K+12 program as a “big, costly and potentially disastrous” experiment that would only compound the existing problems confronting the education sector, particularly lack of teachers and classrooms.

The program, which is being implemented in phases, increases the number of years that Filipino students need to complete their basic education from 11 to 13: one year of kindergarten, six years of elementary school (Grades One to Six), four years of junior high school (Grades Seven to 10) and two years of senior high school (Grades 11 to 12).

“With severe shortages estimated by DepEd itself to be [about] 103,000 elementary and high school teachers, plus 27,000 kindergarten teachers and an equally severe shortage of classrooms estimated at [about] 90,000, why are our Education officials proposing to adopt a system that will obviously result [in] an aggravation of the already severe shortage in teaching personnel and classrooms?” Trillanes said.

He added that classes in most public schools in Metro Manila have 76 to 79 students, which exceeds the ideal ratio of 45 students for every class.

According to the soldier-turned-senator, the national-average class size in the country’s secondary schools is 56 students for every classroom as compared to 34 in Malaysia, 35.1 in South Korea and 41.5 in Thailand.

Trillanes cited as an example the Batasan National High School in Quezon City, which has three shifts of classes daily and where some students go to school as early as 5:30 a.m. and go home as late as 7:20 p.m.

“If we implement DepEd’s K+12 system, are we going to add a fourth shift and require our students to wake up earlier, say at 3 a.m. or maybe go home at midnight?” he said.

“Are we going to pack our students even more tightly with 150 students per class?” the senator added.

The program, Trillanes said, would entail additional costs not only to the government, but most especially to parents.

According to the legislator, parents who are barely able to make ends meet must now bear the burden of the rising cost not only of education but of almost everything else—from food and utilities to gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas.

He warned that the program would result in an increase in the number of dropouts, noting that for every 100 students who enter Grade 1, only 43 manage to finish high school, and only 14 graduate from college under the present basic education system.

Trillanes said that considering the country’s economic situation, the dropout rate would further increase if the government extends the 10-year basic education by two more years.

He debunked the Education department’s claim that the program would improve the quality of basic education and address youth unemployment, citing a recent study by retired Education Deputy Minister Abraham Felipe and Dr. Carolina Porio that showed “there is no correlation between the number of years of basic education and the overall quality of education.”

The lawmaker also brushed aside the department’s argument that 18-year-old students who will graduate from the program will be “employable” even without a college degree.

“If thousands upon thousands of college-degree holders now cannot find employment, what makes the DepEd believe that they can solve our unemployment problem by producing ‘employable’ high school graduates?” Trillanes said. –Sammy Martin, Reporter, Manila Times