Ready for K-to-12?

Specifically, are we ready for Grade 11, the first of the two new senior high school years that have been added to the curriculum by virtue of the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013? By the start of school year 2016-2017, millions of students across the country who would have otherwise graduated from four years of high school would make up the first batch to enroll in Grade 11. After Grade 12, when they graduate in March 2018, they would constitute the first batch of high school students to finish the K-to-12 program.

What does this mean in practical terms? It means, for one, that by next year, public schools would have to find extra classrooms, restrooms, teachers, textbooks, etc. to accommodate the new Grade 11 population that should have gone on to freshman college studies in the earlier setup, but which would now remain for another two years in the school. The old school system replaced by K-to-12 leaned for decades on the annual turnaround of graduating students to make way for incoming batches from the lower years to use existing school facilities.

This time, the first year of implementation of the added senior high school under K-to-12 gives secondary schools the problem of where to put their Grade 11 classes. The burden is even more acute in public schools, which are mandated by law to carry the extra two years, even as they are more typically deprived of the resources and facilities that private schools enjoy. Private junior high schools, while required to adhere to the minimum requirements of the K-to-12 curriculum, may choose not to offer Grades 11-12, which means their students will either have to find another private school that offers the senior high school years, or enroll in a public high school—further adding to the sudden population bulge in those campuses.

While secondary schools grapple with an excess of students, the opposite will be true for colleges and universities in the next two years. With the first batch of students completing Grades 11-12, no enrollments for freshman college will happen in school years 2016-2017 and 2017-2018, leaving tertiary schools with the problem of what to do with teachers on their payroll and classrooms and facilities left unused with the drastic drop in enrollment. This does not even count the possibility of more teachers losing their jobs as subjects are consolidated or dropped outright under the new curriculum.

Is the Philippine educational system ready for this disruption? The Coalition for K to 12 Suspension, a new civic group composed of teachers, faculty associations, nonteaching personnel, parents and labor unionists, warns that it’s not. “Based on the consultations we conducted, we found out that the country’s education system is woefully ill-prepared for this program,” said the coalition’s spokesperson, Rene Luis Tadle. It estimates that about 80,000 people (56,771 college teachers and 22,838 nonteaching staff) will lose their jobs come school year 2016-2017, when college enrollments go down to zero. High schools across the country, on the other hand, lack enough classrooms and facilities to accommodate the students staying behind to take up Grade 11.

K-to-12 has, in fact, been running for some three years now, with the mandated universal kindergarten first implemented in school year 2011-2012, and the enhanced curriculum for Grade 1 and Grade 7 or First Year Junior High School kicking off in school year 2012-2013. Still, as reported by GMA News in June 2014, the program continues to be plagued with a lack of facilities and timely teaching materials. Teachers, for instance, are forced to use textbooks already phased out under the new curriculum simply because the newly approved ones are late in coming.

The Coalition for K to 12 Suspension warns that bigger problems are in store once Grade 11 begins, with the educational system inadequately prepared for the major shift. It has found an ally in Sen. Antonio Trillanes, a long-time critic of the program, who says, “The present system worked for the earlier generations, and there is no reason why it shouldn’t work for the present crop of students.”

That’s a rather simplistic argument against K-to-12, which seems to be a belated but well-intentioned corrective to an outmoded system (the Philippines was the last country in Asia to adopt a 12-year preuniversity program). But, as always, the devil is in the details. What is the government doing to ensure that, by next school year, K-to-12 does not result in chaos?