By Merlina Hernando-Malipot
Private schools on Wednesday urged the government to make the implementation of the K to 12 program optional for them while a teachers’ federation seeks for a thorough review of the program.
(Ali Vicoy / MANILA BULLETIN)
Following the planned review of Congress of the K-12 as announced by Speaker Alan Cayetano, the Federation of Associations of Private School Administrators (FAPSA) is pushing for the optional implementation of the education reform in private schools.
The FAPSA, which caters to issues on the operation of private schools as well as concerns on school management, noted that the offering of the K to 12 program should be made optional for students in private schools.
“FAPSA suggests making K + 12 optional for those enrolled in private schools and continue its full operation in the public schools,” said President Eleazardo Kasilag. “We are optimistic that graduates in the private schools can cope and the academic objectives are realized for those college bound,” he added.
Should the K to 12 program be made optional for private school students, Kasilag said that this will help private schools to “keep up” their operations while preventing the exodus of teachers to public schools. “The government schools have less appropriation maintaining schools public school teachers always claim being burned out of load,” he added.
Earlier, Cayetano noted that many schools still lack equipment in various offerings of the Senior High School (SHS) program. Kasilag noted that even Congressman Roman Romulo, the education chair of basic education in the House of Representatives, also claimed the “non-employability of SHS graduates.
“Aside from employability issues of K to 12 graduates, there are more reasons why the review of K to 12 is vital. For instance, he noted that the tracks and strands in SHS are simply the basic education offered in 1st year college but not well coordinated with CHED nor TESDA .”
“They are supposed to facilitate graduates in college but students now just switch courses making SHS track ineffective since they are not considered pre-requisite in tertiary courses as initially promised,” Kasilag said.
Kasilag also noted that making K to 12 optional for private schools is in line with the efforts to affirm the complementarity of both sectors as cited in the Constitution. “In the end, the state should recognize the complementary roles of public and private institutions in the educational system private schools are regarded as partners as co-equal sharing resources and capabilities in promoting education,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines said Congress’ recent push to review the K to 12 of DepEd is “five years late.”
ACT noted that the DepEd is directed by the Implementing Rules and Regulation (IRR) of the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013 to “conduct a mandatory evaluation review of the program by the end of school year 2014-2015” while the the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee, on the other hand, “is mandated to oversee, monitor, and evaluate the implementation” of the K to 12 program.
Despite this, ACT expressed hope that the DepEd and Congress will conduct an “honest-to-goodness review” of the K to 12 that would allegedly “expose the failures of the program in improving the access to and the quality of basic education in the country.” ACT added that teachers, parents, and students “suffer every day the catastrophic experiment that is the K to 12 program as it has only managed to worsen the crises in the Philippine educational system.”
ACT said that the addition of two years in basic education “has only resulted to worse shortages in the educational system given the government’s consistent tack to scrimp on the education budget.” For the group, deficiency in basic education resource such as classrooms and teachers - among others - were allegedly doubled.
The group also alleged that “privatization” of basic education has “worsened” as the government “depended primarily on private schools to provide senior high school education instead of investing on the construction” of public SHSs. “As vouchers do not cover the whole cost of private school education, more and more seek to transfer to the limited number of SHS, while others are forced to become high school dropouts,” ACT added.
ACT also noted that the the bid to produce “holistically developed Filipino learners with 21st century skills” and “employment-ready high school graduates” - which is among the goals of the K to 12 program - “have caused the heavy experimentation of the curriculum.”
For the group, the “misgivings on the effectiveness” of K to 12 program “center on its failure” to produce ‘employment-ready’ graduates. “While the program obviously fell short of this avowed objective, it would be more meaningful to assess the program vis-a-vis the attainment of education objectives as set by the Constitution,” ACT stressed.
Given all these, ACT said that the changes in the basic education curriculum “equally hit tertiary education” with Filipino language and Philippine Literature subjects removed and the Humanities and Social Sciences “weakened” with the “drive towards specialization and development of technical skills intensifies.”
Overall, ACT said that the K to 12 review should “be truly meaningful for the Filipino people and our aspiration for national development.” For this to happen, the group said that the K to 12 review must “question the program to its core” and answer if it “has it served to foster nationalism and patriotism, accelerate social progress, and promote total human liberation.”