Make it worthwhile

The so-called K to 12 program became law only last month, but the Department of Education actually began implementing it a year ago. Those students who started in the first and seventh grades in academic year 2012-2013 together comprise the first batch of the still-controversial program, an ambitious attempt to overhaul the Philippine basic education system and align it with global standards. Because the academic year, which begins today for most public schools in the country, marks the second year of implementation, criticism of the program has shifted focus—to the logistics of execution.

Perhaps for many parents and students alike, the most controversial aspect of the new program is the disorientation it will produce, with this year’s entry of the first eighth graders (those in the second year of a six-year high school program somewhat confusingly labelled the seventh to twelfth grades). To be sure, those who went through a similar disorienting experience when the seventh grade was introduced, under another education reform implemented a few decades ago, realized in time that the disruption could be handled by the usual strategies of adaption. We think the case will be the same with K to 12. All the same, we cannot minimize the confusion and anxiety the new program may evoke, in both parents and students.

In a recent column, for example, University of the Philippines professor Michael Tan focused on the necessity for both parents and students to discuss the question of track choice, as now defined by law: technical/vocational, sports and arts, and academic (with the academic track further divided into three lanes or strands).

Another implementation issue: Will there be enough classrooms, textbooks and (above all) teachers? The struggle to get the law through the chambers of Congress was helped in part by the commitment of the DepEd to answer all shortages by the end of 2013. A lofty goal, worthy of everyone’s support. According to the K to 12 primer presented in the Official Gazette, the department intends to build 17,939 classrooms, provide 31 million “additional learning materials” and hire 61,510 teachers in 2013.

The record of the last two years has been encouraging: over 32,000 classrooms constructed, over 62 million textbooks “delivered.” These numbers need to be verified, and the quality of classrooms constructed and textbooks supplied checked; it is the stated goal for the number of teachers hired, however, which strains belief: In the last two years, an additional 35,000 teachers were hired—and the target for this year is almost double that.

But these are practical questions, something that can be measured and managed. Beyond implementation, however, the crucial question remains: Is extending the academic schedule to 13 years (one year of kindergarten, six years of grade school, four years of junior high school and two years of senior high) the kind of change the Philippines needs?

There are respected academics who would argue that the entire K to 12 program is a mistake, or mistaken in its assumptions. But the “Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013” represents the considered opinion of many other academics as well as government policymakers that the extension is in fact necessary. The law itself best summarizes the program’s stated goal: It is “hereby declared the policy of the State that every graduate of basic education shall be an empowered individual who has learned, through a program that is rooted on sound educational principles and geared towards excellence, the foundations for learning throughout life, the competence to engage in work and be productive, the ability to coexist in fruitful harmony with local and global communities, the capability to engage in autonomous, creative, and critical thinking, and the capacity and willingness to transform others and one’s self.”

It’s quite a mouthful, and there will be no end of critics or skeptics who will contest either the policy itself or the program as the chosen means to implement it. But the tone Tan struck in his recent column seems best, and most useful: “The K to 12 program is now a law and we have to find ways to make it work. We owe it to the students and their parents to make the additional two years worthwhile.”