An interesting challenge

With the K to 12 Enhanced Basic Education Act now a law, it’s time to focus on action. No more excuses. As the so-called centerpiece of President Aquino’s administration, K to 12 must now live up to its promise of reforming basic education from the ground up.

The new law is not simply about changing labels so that first year high school is now Grade 7, second year is now Grade 8, and so on. Its objective is not just to add kindergarten at the lower end plus two years at the other end so students will have to go through Grades 11 and 12 (aka senior high school) instead of being college-bound after 10 years of classroom learning. Such changes are superficial.

K to 12 is meant to allow our students to stay in school in the same length of time required elsewhere in the world so they can acquire concepts and skills to mastery—repeat, mastery—and prepare them for higher education, employment and/or entrepreneurship.

The reform also wants to instill in grade school and high school students the desire to be lifelong learners—an important point given the unpredictability of the employment opportunities and skills spawned by technology. Five years ago, for instance, there were no want ads for social media managers, app creators, or company managers for digital. Thus, to educate today’s kids is to equip them with love of learning and appreciation for innovation, in addition to the skills to adjust, to analyze, to make decisions, and to apply knowledge, as well as the values they will need to cope with a rapidly changing world.

To give children a head start, K to 12 mandates compulsory kindergarten, which is now under the education department and no longer a preschool childcare concern of the social welfare department.

To ensure student proficiency in all subjects, instruction in the early grades is conveyed in the mother tongue (MT), the students’ first language, which is also taught as a subject all its own. Last year, 12 MT languages were taught, enough to cover the various regions. The objective is that, after first grade, a student will be able to read and learn in the MT, which will then serve as the foundation for learning Filipino and English.

There are mixed reviews from the Grade 1 teachers who used MT-based instruction last year. Some public school teachers reported more enthused class participation by children because the MT is in their comfort zone. But the difficulty arose when the teacher had to relocate to the teaching site and is not herself proficient in the students’ MT.

By the second and third grading periods, Filipino and English are introduced respectively. In Grades 4 to 6, these will be gradually introduced as languages of instruction. Both will also become the medium of  instruction in junior and senior high school.

Besides multilingual instruction, K to 12 also offers integrated and seamless learning. Subjects are taught in spiral progression, meaning the simplest concepts are taught first and the most complicated concepts last. Biology, chemistry, algebra, geometry and other subjects that used to be tackled only in high school will now be introduced in grade school in easy-to-learn form.

The success of K to 12 will doubtless depend on the teacher’s thorough handling of a particular phase of the subject at every grade level. It’s not an exaggeration then to say that the heart and soul of K to 12 are the teachers, the very people who have had to endure criticism for the poor quality of education prior to this reform.

In interviews, Grades 1 and 7 teachers complained that they were expected to handle the new curriculum with only a week’s training, and that instruction materials were delivered too late at some schools. Teachers had to resort to presenting lessons on Manila paper, which meant working through the night, or photocopying, which cost more. This is hardly the way to start an education revolution.

Will we ever get this education thing right? Time will tell, but political will and public support will make a huge difference. We can view K to 12 as too ambitious, a colossal promise that will never be realized because of the grievous sins in our past and our present—overcrowding despite a high dropout rate, teacher shortage, substandard learning resources, an overwhelming tradition of miseducation, and so on.

Or we can view K to 12 as an interesting challenge, the momentum that students, teachers, administrators and parents sorely need in these dispirited times.