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MANILA, MARCH 14, 2012
(PHILIPPINE ONLINE CHRONICLES) by Sarah Katrina
Maramag - Is the K-12 model good for the Philippine education system?
The enhanced K-12 program, or the Department of Education's (DepEd) proposal
to overhaul the basic and secondary education curriculum by adding two more
years to the system is arguably one of the most drastic and controversial
programs of the Aquino administration.
The program is proposed to start in school year 2012-2013 for Grade 1 and
first year high school students with the target of full implementation by SY
2018-2019.
K-12 has been met with criticism from youth and student groups, teachers,
parents and the academic community. The DepEd, for its part, appears determined
to enact the program with its proposed budget catering mostly to preparing the
grounds for its eventual implementation.
The DepEd argues that the K-12 program will be the solution to yearly basic
education woes and the deteriorating quality of education. Critics, however,
counteract that the education crisis needs to be addressed more fundamentally
and adding more school years would only exacerbate the situation.
Dissecting K-12
The K-12 model is an educational system for basic and secondary education
patterned after the United States, Canada, and some parts of Australia. The
current basic education system is also an archetype of American schooling but
with a 10-year cycle.
DepEd reasons that it is high time to adopt a K-12 system, attributing the
low achievement scores and poor quality of basic education to the present school
setup. Following wide protests over the proposal, the department released its
official position defending K-12.
Below are the main arguments and corresponding counter-arguments from
critics.
1. The K-12 will solve the annual growing number of out-of-school youth.
Students and parents, however complain that it would be an added burden to poor
families.
While public education is free, a political youth group estimates that a
student would still need an average of P20,000 per school year to cover
transportation, food, school supplies and other schooling expenses.
Also, based on the latest Family Income and Expenditure Survey, families
prioritize spending for food and other basic needs over their children's school
needs. Two more years for basic education would inevitably translate to higher
dropout rate.
2. The K-12 will address low achievement scores and poor academic performance
of elementary and high school students. DepEd says that the poor quality of
basic education is reflected in the low achievement scores of students. Results
of the TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study), however,
negate the connection of the number of years to the performance of students.
According to results of the TIMSS, the length of schooling does not
necessarily mean better scores. In fact, some countries with the same or shorter
school cycle garnered the highest scores while those implementing the K-12 model
or more years of schooling got lower scores.
According to a study released by former Deputy Education Minister Abraham I.
Felipe and Fund for Assistance to Private Education (FAPE) Executive Director
Carolina C. Porio, the DepEd's arguments are "impressionistic and erroneous"
because there is no clear correlation between the length of schooling and
students' performance.
The said study shows that fourth graders from Australia had respectable TIMSS
scores despite having only one year of pre-schooling, while Morocco (two years
of pre-school), Norway (three years) and Armenia and Slovenia (both four years)
had lower scores than Australia. South Korea, which has the same length of basic
education cycle as the Philippines, was among the top performers in the TIMSS,
while those with longer pre-schooling (Ghana, Morocco, Botswana and Saudi
Arabia, three years) had lower test scores.
Test scores of Filipino students, meanwhile, were lower than those garnered
by all 13 countries with shorter elementary cycles, namely, Russia, Armenia,
Latvia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Moldova,
Italy, Egypt and Iran.
In the high school level, Singapore that also has a four-year high school
cycle, got the highest score. Ironically, the Philippines got a lower score
together with countries that have longer high school cycles like South Africa,
Chile, Palestine, Morocco and Saudi Arabia.
For the pre-college level, the Philippines also got a low score, but so did
the United States, which has a 15-year basic and secondary education cycle.
Students from Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong, all with shorter
education cycles, got higher scores than America students.
3. The DepEd has enough resources to implement the K-12. Interestingly,
countries whose students got high scores in the TIMSS were the ones whose
governments allotted high public spending for education.
Despite nominal increases in the total education budget, the government has
been spending less per capita on education. The real spending per capita per day
dropped to P6.85 in 2009.
From 2001 to 2009, education's portion in the national budget has steadily
decreased. This pales in comparison to neighboring countries – Malaysia, 7.4
percent and Thailand, 4 percent. It is also lower than the four percent average
for all countries that were included in the World Education Indicators in 2006.
The country is also lagging behind its Asian counterparts in public expenditure
on education as a percentage of total public spending.
In a statement, President Benigno Aquino III said that his administration is
prioritizing education and, as proof, the DepEd budget will increase by P32
billion in 2011.
However, according to Anakbayan spokesperson Charisse Banez, "Even if you
combine the DepEd and SUCs (state college and universities) budgets, it will
only equal to three percent of the GDP, a far cry from the six percent
GDFP-amount advocated by the United Nations."
The UN Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO) recommend
that governments spend at least six percent of their GDP for education.
Former Education secretary Mona Valisno stated in a separated study that
DepEd needs at least P100 billion to fully address the shortage of 93,599
classrooms and 134,400 seats and P63 million for textbooks and scholarships.
Proponents of the program allude to the experience of St. Mary's Sagada – a
school implementing K-12 that has been topping the National Achievement Test in
Mountain Province. However, aside from the K-12, the school also has a 1:20
teacher to student ratio and is not suffering any sort of shortage in faculty or
facilities.
Critics of the K-12 assert that while government resources have been found
wanting and insufficient for the present 10-year cycle, how will it be able to
afford to fund a K-12 model?
4. The K-12 will open doors for more jobs for the youth, even without a
college diploma.
DepEd says that a K-12 program will improve the chances for youth employment
as it is aimed to improve technical-vocational skills through focusing on arts,
aquaculture and agriculture, among others. The K-12, it further states, will
ensure that students graduating at the age of 18 will have jobs, thus making
them "employable" even without a college degree.
However, critics are quick to note that the Philippines, that has a
predominantly young population, also has the highest overall unemployment rate
in East Asia and the Pacific Region. According to World Bank study, the country
also has the highest youth unemployment rate. Young Filipino workers are twice
as likely to be unemployed than those in older age groups as they figure in the
annual average of at least 300,000 new graduates that add up to the labor force.
The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) reported in 2008 that 50
percent of the unemployed 2.7 million nationwide were aged 15 to 24. Of these,
461,000 or 35 percent had college degrees while about 700,000 unemployed youth
either finished high school or at least reached undergraduate levels.
Therefore, the persistent high unemployment rates, may not be necessarily
linked with the present 10-year cycle but instead with the country's existing
economic system and the government's job generation policies.
5. Filipino graduates will be automatically recognized as "professionals"
abroad. In the present 10-year cycle, the DepEd argues, the quality of education
is reflected in the "inadequate preparation of high school graduates for the
world of work or entrepreneurship or higher education."
What the K-12 program aims to achieve, therefore, is to reinforce cheap
semi-skilled labor for the global market. With young workers, mostly
semi-skilled and unskilled workers now making up an estimated 10.7 percent of
the total Filipino labor migrant population, it comes as no surprise then that
the government is now programming its youth to servicing needs of the global
market.
Labor migration, however, has resulted in the brain drain of Filipino skilled
workers and professionals. Ironically, while the DepEd and the government mouths
a so-called "professionalization" of the young labor force in foreign markets,
their significance to domestic development and nation-building is sadly being
undervalued at the expense of providing cheap labor under the guise of providing
employment.
While proponents and advocates hail the K-12 model as the "saving grace" of
youth unemployment, critics argue that it will only aggravate the country's
dependence on labor export and the inflow of remittances that do not necessarily
contribute to substantive and sustainable nation-building.
A Filipino education
Lastly, the DepEd justifies the K-12 model by saying that the present short
basic education program affects the human development of Filipino students.
Ultimately, regardless of whichever "model", what the youth and country
direly needs is for the development and establishment of an education system
that caters to the needs of the Filipino youth and the society in general.
The crisis of the Philippine education system, in all levels, is stemmed not
on the superficial, in this case the number of schooling years, but rather on
the conditions and foundation on which it subsists. Unless the government
addresses in earnest poor public spending, high costs of schooling, the
predominance of a colonial curriculum, lack of transparency and accountability
amid widespread corruption within the sector and the development of the
country's science and technology for domestic development, all efforts will
remain on the surface.
And neither 10 nor 12 years would make much of difference.
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2012 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
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rights reserved
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