THE COMMISSION on Higher Education (CHEd) has decided to postpone the “reframed” general education (GE) curriculum following widespread criticism.
CHEd Chairperson Shirley Agrupis said the decision to defer implementation, originally set for Academic Year 2026-2027, was reached in an interagency meeting consisting of the Department of Education, Teacher Education Council, and the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2).
“This is to give us time to analyze and study well the different manifestations because we understand where they are coming from,” Agrupis said in a press conference on May 13.
Agrupis said the target date for pilot testing would be moved to 2028.
Under the reframed curriculum, the number of GE units will be reduced to a minimum of 18 units with six courses namelyProfessional Communication, Global Trends and Emerging Technologies, Data, Evidence, and Ethics in a Knowledge-Driven Society, Rizal and Philippine Studies, Labor Education, and an institutional course.
The overhaul was meant to “eliminate redundancies between the senior high school and college GE courses,” and to focus on an “outcomes-based” curriculum, which shifts from a “teacher-centric” to a “student-centric” design.
CHEd earlier said in a statement that all position papers and feedback from stakeholders would be reviewed by the technical panel for GE.
READ: CHEd: Proposed overhaul of gen ed courses part of ‘continuing reform’ | The Varsitarian
‘Teachers should be consulted’
UST Arts and Letters Faculty Association President Rene Tadle welcomed the CHEd’s move, stressing that teachers should be consulted in policy decisions.
“CHEd’s deferment shows that teachers can no longer be treated as an afterthought in education policy,” Tadle, also the president of teachers’ coalition Cotescup and newly elected executive vice president of the UST Faculty Union (USTFU), told the Varsitarian.
“If EDCOM 2 will help shape the future of Philippine education, then organized teachers—especially private school teachers—must have actual seats at the table, not mere invitations after decisions have already been made,” he added.
He was referring to the congressional commission tasked to reform education, which had been criticized for backing the GE overhaul.
Tadle said education policymakers should also include the working realities of private school teachers into the national education reform agenda.
On May 12, various faculty and advocacy groups, including the USTFU and Cotescup, submitted a position paper to CHEd to junk the proposed GE curriculum.
In a 13-item position paper, the groups asked CHEd to delay any pilot testing until a full review of the existing curriculum is completed.
It also asked for a nationwide, bottom-up consultation process to assess the curriculum’s effectiveness and guide its revisions, evaluate existing core courses, and restore removed subjects such as Filipino, Panitikan, and Philippine Government and Constitution.
They also demanded protection for faculty workers from potential job displacement that could be caused by the curriculum revision.
John Vincent Ignacio, the USTFU external vice president, warned that faculty members could lose their jobs because of the reframed GE curriculum.
“The union is very much vested in this issue because there’s a lot of labor implications if this proposal of CHEd is implemented,” Ignacio told the Varsitarian.
“In our rough estimate in the university, at least 20% of our faculty members are teaching in the [GE] courses,” he said.
In an interview with the Varsitarian, former CHEd chairperson Prospero “Popoy” de Vera III said major reforms in the curriculum should be based on data and studied thoroughly.
“Because that is what we are in higher education, we are guided by studies, we are guided by research, we are guided by data when we make decisions,” he said.
De Vera said that before leaving CHEd in May 2025, he asked the technical panel to create an inventory of faculty members who could potentially be affected by the curriculum reform.
“It must be consultative, you need to talk to the students, you need to talk to their parents, you need to talk to the faculty members, you need to talk to the schools,” he said. With reports from Fritz Nathan A. Diaz, Carlo Jose H. Ruga, Joachim Nigel Z. Tanglao
