BLOG WATCH: FIRST THINGS FIRST - COMMENTARY ON PHL
K+12
WASHINGTON, JUNE 5, 2012
(MULTILINGUAL PHILIPPINES BLOG) @ http://multilingualphilippines.com/?p=5999
BY Dr. Angel C. de Dios
[Professor Angel de Dios with pupils of the Paete Elementary School
during the launching of the 'Alay Computer' project by the Paetenians
International group online in 2005]
By Angel C. de Dios Department of Chemistry Georgetown University
Washington, DC 20057 a_c_de_dios@yahoo.com]
(The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent
Georgetown University. AdeD)
The basic education system of the Philippines faces two major problems:
(1) high dropout rates in primary and secondary schools, and
(2) lack of
mastery of specific skills and content as reflected in poor performance in
standard tests for both Grade IV and Grade VIII (2nd year high school) students.
Unfortunately, the proposed K+12 curriculum does not directly address these
problems.
Both dropout rate and poor performance in standard exams
indicate failure in the early years of education. That these problems are caused
by a congested 10-year curriculum is not strongly supported by currently
available data. The international standard tests take into account both years of
education and basic skills. The standard tests ensure that students from all the
participating countries had the same number of years of schooling.
The proposed K plus 12 curriculum has various components. It is useful to
look at each component in deciding whether it helps address the pressing
problems Philippine basic education presently faces:
(1) Kindergarten: This addresses the problems. Early childhood learning when
done properly does provide a head start for elementary schools. Kindergarten
prepares the child emotionally, physically and mentally for grade school.
(2) No formal subject of science in K to Grade II: This is a waste of a great
opportunity. Science education in early childhood is cheap. It does not require
elaborate laboratories or equipment. Young children, in addition, are naturally
inquisitive and the years of kinder to grade II are excellent for introduction
of basic scientific curiosity and methods. Only having science as a formal
subject can ensure that science will indeed be covered.
(3) Use of mother tongue as medium of instruction: This is very expensive. It
requires competent teachers who can teach math and science using the mother
tongue. There is no objection that the mother tongue must be taught as a subject
in elementary schools since this allows a smoother transition from home to
school. The question of what medium should be used in instruction is separate.
One medium of instruction can unite the nation. English is the best option since
course materials especially from the internet are usually in English. In this
respect, Singapore is a good example to follow.
(4) Spiral curriculum: This type of teaching is highly applicable to
elementary schools where both science and math are still treated as general
approaches. In high school, both math and science diverge into separate
disciplines. A spiral curriculum in high school will require teachers with
knowledge in all these areas at a sufficient level. These required teachers are
not going to be available in numbers so this program will be poorly implemented.
A layered curriculum, on the other hand, is easier to implement – biology is
taught in one year, chemistry in the next, physics is usually the last. In this
manner, a high school can operate with a chemistry teacher, a physics teacher
and a biology teacher, and each one need not be a master of all three
disciplines.
(5) Discovery-based learning This type of learning requires longer hours and
fails without sufficient guidance (see "An Analysis of the Failure of Electronic
Media and Discovery Based Learning", Clark, et al. (2009) http://www.cogtech.usc.edu/publications/clark_etal_2009_analysis_of_the_failure_of_electronic_
media.pdf).
The ideal is a mix between traditional and inquiry based methods. This is
usually achieved in the sciences by having separate lecture and laboratory
components. Guidance is provided during lectures and students work on their own
or as a group in the laboratory.
(6) Last but not the least (in fact, this point is crucial), the proposed K
plus 12 curriculum also involves short school hours. This seems to be an attempt
to enable multiple shifts in the schools. This goes against decongesting the
curriculum. It likewise does not make it worthwhile for schoolchildren
especially those who have to travel far to attend school. This also opens
opportunities for child labor as well as greater environmental (outside of
school) influences on children education. Elementary schools in the US are full
day so that students do have time to cover the material and, at the same time,
it allows parents to work and be more productive. A full day in school means
less television, less video games, less time on the streets, and less other
activities that do not contribute to a sound education of the young.
Most countries have only ten years of compulsory education. Compulsory
education in the US varies from state to state, but the average requires anyone
who is under 16 years of age to be either enrolled in a school or home-schooled.
This means that on average, the US only has 10- 11 (including kindergarten)
years of compulsory education. The last two years in the US K-12 education
already include courses in tertiary education.
These are called advanced placement (AP) or international baccalaureate (IB)
courses. Examples are calculus (up to multivariable) and AP chemistry. Students
who take AP chemistry usually have already finished one year of basic chemistry
and one year of advanced chemistry, so in sum, a student could have taken three
years of chemistry while in high school. Some schools in the US can not offer
these, and consequently, there is great heterogeneity among US schools.
Addressing basic education is a matter of prioritization. Adding kindergarten
and two years to high school is estimated to cost more than 100 billion pesos.
On the other hand, to solve the two pressing problems, as UNESCO has advised, 6%
of the GDP must be assigned to education.
At the current funding (2.3% of GDP) of the Department of Education (DepEd),
additional years will only lead to a greater demand for resources. Adding two
years to high school essentially increases the needs of a high school by 50% –
teachers, classrooms, desks, toilets, learning materials, etc.
The DepEd can only answer less than half of what UNESCO deems is necessary
for the 10-year basic education program. Adding two more years will stretch the
budget of DepEd even further.
Implementing a new curriculum requires strong leadership at the school level.
The success of a school depends a lot on the principal. A significant
fraction of public schools in the Philippines currently do not have a principal
or a head teacher. This clearly needs to be addressed first before any reform in
curriculum is initiated. Otherwise, a new curriculum has no hope of being
implemented successfully.
Instead of trying to attack the problem at the end of high school, efforts
must be focused on the early years of education. This is where the dropout rate
begins to escalate and these are the years where students are failing to learn
as diagnosed by the standard test scores.
Resources are very much needed in the first ten years of education and
kindergarten and DepEd can do a better job on these years if DepEd does not have
to worry about the added senior years in high school.
The government should allow its citizens to work out on their own a solution
for the desired two years that aim to prepare students either for college or the
workforce. College preparatory schools or community colleges can do this job and
TESDA could address those who are leaning towards vocational training.
For any overwhelming policy that involves dramatic changes and budget
requirements, it is important that the policy is based on good data and
statistics.
The Philippines, with its financial condition, cannot afford to waste. The
ten-year basic education program can work as demonstrated by a Philippine school
in Qatar (see "Do Filipino schools make the grade?" http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/qatar/130893-do-filipino-schools-make-the-grade.html)
The Philippine school at Doha, Qatar participated in PISA 2009 and their
scores were: Science (466), Math: (461) and Reading: (480). These scores place
the Philippines near the average scores of participating countries.
The problems concerning basic education that developing countries face are
enormous and complex. A few years from now, the international donor community
will look at how close governments they have funded to improve education have
reached the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).
It is highly likely that the Philippines will not meet the second item in the
MDG, universal primary education:
MDG (2nd bullet under item 19):
"We resolve that… ….To ensure that, by the same date (2015), children
everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of
primary schooling and that girls and boys will have equal access to all levels
of education." (http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.pdf)
With regard to this goal, here are the indicators for the Philippines:
Percentage of pupils starting grade 1 who reach grade 5, both sexes (last
updated: 09 Aug 2011): 2001 (75.3), 2002 (73.4), 2003 (72.2), 2004 (71.5), 2005
(70.4), 2006 (73.2), 2007 (75.3) (see http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/SeriesDetail.aspx?srid=591&crid=608)
Other data have been summarized, for example, in the following article in
Business World: http://www.bworldonline.com/Research/economicindicators.php?id=0498.
It is understandable that the Philippine government is under tremendous
pressure and it seems that a magic potion is required. However, what is lacking
in most of the components proposed is a thoughtful and careful consideration of
evidence and data.
It is unfortunate that amidst the lack of sound evidence, although this
paucity in data has been emphasized and repeated so many times in published
reviews and articles, various components have been incorporated in the K+12 plan
with "panacea" stamped on them. The following paragraphs highlight specific
examples.
The mother tongue based multiple language education (MTBMLE) is one example.
In 2009, the US Supreme Court issued an opinion (Horne vs. Flores) that
Structured English Immersion (SEI) works better than bilingual education. It was
a narrow decision (5 against 4) so it is not a clear judgment against MTBMLE,
but it sure is a clear sign that MTBMLE is not "panacea".
Recent news from the state of California also indicates that multilingual
education is likewise not working well (see "English-Learning Students Far
Behind Under English-Only Methods" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/25/english-learning-students_n_1030990.html).
The world experts in MTBMLE are careful in promoting MTBMLE. To make a strong
case in favor of MTBMLE, data must show that high dropout rates are
unquestionably due to using a second language as medium of instruction (Smits et
al., 2008, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0017/001787/178702e.pdf
).
I strongly recommend taking a closer look at Table A.1 of this study by Smits
et al. because this contains data pertinent to the Philippines.
Specifically, the paper states: "The figures presented in columns 4 and 8 of
the table give an indication of the part of the attendance differences that is
due to differences in the background characteristics. For both age groups the
reduction is 25 percent or more in 13 of the 22 countries. So in the majority of
countries the background characteristics play a role of importance. This result
provides support for hypothesis H1.
Hypothesis H1 of this paper is "The differences in educational outcomes among
linguistic groups are (partly) due to socioeconomic differences and/or
differences in urbanization of the place of living among the groups."
The Philippines lists 45 and 48% in columns 4 and 8, respectively. In this
light, the Philippines is among the three odd countries listed that show very
strong correlation between school retention and socioeconomic factors, the
others are Ghana and Peru. In Table B1, page 41 of the paper, data from the
Philippines clearly suggest that the various language groups in the country do
not differ from each other in a significant manner in terms of dropout rates.
Another aspect of the K+12 plan that has been promoted without scrutiny is
the length of instructional hours.
This is intimately related to multiple shifts in schools. This area, as
experts have warned, is likewise characterized by scarce good data. There are
large amounts of data that contain information regarding the length of
instruction and learning outcomes, but these data involve so many additional
factors.
Nonetheless. amidst these complicated cases, one thing is clear: "….the
amount of time spent engaged in learning tasks is related to student
performance…."(Abadzi, " Instructional Time Loss in Developing Countries:
Concepts, Measurement, and Implications" World Bank Res Obs (2009) 24 (2):
267-290, http://wbro.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/2/267.full.pdf)
The issue of multiple shifts is important and could be a significant factor
determining learning and one that definitely warrants a careful study.
I know that anecdotal instances are not of any help, but when I was in grade
school, I have always wondered why the top six students from the graduating
class always came from the morning shift.
In high schools, it was worse, students were placed in sections according to
their past year's performance, and the lower the section was, the later their
shift was.
In a school where three shifts were employed, the poorest of the learners
took the late-afternoon-evening shift. Now, these are all anecdotal but these
instances illustrate that these factors need to be studied carefully.
Would it satisfy the international donor community that the Philippines would
embark on a heroic last minute effort?
My answer is that this question is the wrong one to ask. The Philippine
government must do what is good for its citizens.
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
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