An advocacy group expressed support for reviewing the K to 12 program, particularly the implementation of the additional two years of the Senior High School (SHS) program. Senior High School students (DepEd file photo)

“Kailangan bigyan ang K to 12 ng chance (We need to give K to 12 a chance),” said Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) Executive Director Justine Raagas during the presentation of the State of Philippine Education Report on May 29. READ: [https://mb.com.ph/2023/5/27/advocacy-group-to-unveil-the-state-of-ph-education-on-may-29](https://mb.com.ph/2023/5/27/advocacy-group-to-unveil-the-state-of-ph-education-on-may-29) Raagas said underscored the importance of doing assessments as the Department of Education (DepEd) reviews the K to 12 program. “DepEd is doing a review of the K to 10 system and we are supportive of that [and] the fact that they opened this to the public,” Raagas explained. She pointed out that assessing and seeing “where the problems” are is very important before declaring that the K to 12 program is a failure. READ: [https://mb.com.ph/2023/5/29/unfair-to-say-k-to-12-program-has-failed-pb-ed](https://mb.com.ph/2023/5/29/unfair-to-say-k-to-12-program-has-failed-pb-ed) “The first thing that we really need to do is to make sure that we assess and we see where the problems are first bago naman sabihin natin na (before we say that) it’s really failing,” Raagas said.

The ‘promise’ of SHS

Raagas noted that one of the issues where many people feel K to 12 has failed is that it has yet to deliver employability which was among its promises. “Taking a step back, employability does not really rest on the education sector alone,” she said. Raagas explained that one of the challenges for many K to 12 graduates who may have taken the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) strand and “may have found themselves lost is that and couldn’t find jobs is because it was the height of the pandemic” --- noting that there were a lot of “job losses even for those who graduated college.” She added that for those who graduated from SHS, business still has an “aversion or kind of feels doubtful about high school degree.” This, Raagas said, is not the “fault of the schools or the system itself — it’s really perception.” This perception, she explained, is also something that needs to be looked at and changed. “It is unfair to blame the system for employability when there are many other factors and there are many other players leading to unemployment or unemployability of young people,” she added. Given this, Raagas said that PBEd is looking forward to the ongoing review of the SHS. “We have to do that before doing other initiatives or changing the system completely,” she added. RELATED STORY: [https://mb.com.ph/2023/5/29/ph-education-in-crisis-1](https://mb.com.ph/2023/5/29/ph-education-in-crisis-1)