MORE time to learn? Or more money to burn?
The Department of Education (DepEd) is ramming President Aquino’s flagship educational program, the K + 12, down the throats of parents, students, and taxpayers without public consultation and without any regard for the gargantuan costs of the program. Most importantly, the program benefits the DepEd, the public school system, and the education establishment, which have in fact been responsible for the disaster that is the basic education system. In short, for the DepEd to move heaven and earth to have K+12 implemented despite its questionable premise—that adding more years to basic schooling would do the trick and arrest the decline of basic education—is self-serving. It would be rewarding itself for its irredeemable failure. Think of a public school teacher who’s a poor, incompetent, and even corrupt mentor; think of her giving herself a raise and more allowances for producing lemons; think of making students take two more years of schooling under her tutelage, their tuition subsidized by taxpayers. Think of such terrible teacher and the terrible failures she would produce as the face of K+12 and weep.
At P57 billion, the initial cost of adding two more years to the present 10-year basic education, the price tag of K+12 is simply prohibitive. But because the costs will be shouldered as always by taxpayers, Aquino, Secretary Armin Luistro, and the DepEd are adamant in pressing through with K+12. After all, despite their historic failure and corruption, the DepEd and public schools will still have the biggest slice of the general appropriations act; K+12 and the expenses it entails will ensure that.
As for the impact of K+12 on private schools, Luistro, who’s a Christian Brother and a former president of De la Salle University, simply doesn’t care. After all, rich families will still send their kids to elitist La Salle, Jesuit, and Opus Dei schools that charge fantastic tuition, the higher the better since it would reaffirm the social status of the rich, the new rich, and the rich wanna-be. The schools that will suffer a decline in enrolment will be the middle-class schools such as Catholic parochial schools and those run by more pastorally conscious and socially responsible religious orders and congregations. If only to prevent Catholic schools from closing down because of dwindling enrolment as a result of parents finding two more years of Catholic education for their kids beyond their means, it’s only expected that the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines will oppose or put the break on K+12.
Quantity over quality
While the 10-year basic schooling has often been cited as not in keeping with the regional trend of 11 to 13 years, there must be balance between quantity and quality in reforming the Philippine education system. Too often quality is sacrificed for quantity, so that standards are neglected in order to say, provide access to education to the masses. Moreover, there’s no major study that adding two more years to schooling would work. The Presidential Commission on Educational Reform during the time of President Joseph Estrada, when the education secretary was also a Christian Brother, had recommended not two, but only a year to be added to basic schooling. Obviously, any effective response to the decline of the quality of Philippine education must be calibrated and must consider costs.
Longer schooling translates to additional expenses. Though DepEd can argue that children’s tuition is subsidized by government (ergo, by taxpayer’s money), transportation expenses, food allowance, and school supplies are not. The additional two years may actually abet a higher drop-out rate. Most importantly , can the DepEd and the public school system really deliver quality education? Their track record speaks for itself.
Adding two more years may only prolong the stay of students getting more of the same low-quality education. Longer years may beget lower quality education. In fact, a recent study by Fund for Assistance to Private Education (FAPE) Executive Director Carolina C. Porio and former deputy education minister Abraham I. Felipe found no direct correlation between the length of schooling and a student’s performance.
Moreover, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) found South Korea among the top performing countries. Incidentally, like the Philippines, South Korea has the same number of basic education years. In contrast, the United States, which adopts a 15-year elementary and secondary education program, performed poorly in the TIMSS. Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea garnered higher scores despite shorter schooling. The results may make American author Mark Twain smile. He wrote, “Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.”
It is also worrisome that K+12 seems to be riding the globalization bandwagon, by prioritizing the molding of students to become semi-skilled workers so they could work abroad. The two years are added with the presumption that most Filipinos won’t make it to college. Thus, basic education is made to emphasize vocational and technical skills. Another questionable change in the curriculum involves science subjects not being taught until Grade 3, as DepEd wants to focus on English proficiency starting Grade 1. This may indicate that analytical thinking is not a priority for K+12, which appears bent on feeding its products to global outsourcing, if not to the wider export manpower industry.
In the end, K+12 is a panacea: it chooses quantity over quality. It turns a blind eye on the real problems bugging the education system: the lack of accountability of DepEd and public schools; the failure to introduce competition and institute an effective rewards system so that poor-performing public schools could be closed down; the legislation and establishment of new public schools ostensibly to provide greater access to education but in reality, are opportunities for public works spending spree, kickbacks and influence peddling by politicians, bureaucrats, and profiteers; incompetent teachers, corrupt textbook procurement system, and generally a battened leviathan of a bureaucracy and state system that, despite its perennial failures, is rewarded always with more subsidies and more taxpayer’s money to burn.
International standards of school system has 12 years of basic education: 6 years of elementary, 3 years of middle school, another 3 years for high school. It only vary, though, that some countries only make it mandatory for its youth to undergo at least 9 years of basic education. The 3 years of senior secondary is not compulsory.
The article should have clarified which years are mandatory and which years are not in basic education. The point here is that international standards for basic education system is 12 years, which is the number of required years for a student to take before entering tertiary level to obtain a college degree. That’s why Filipino high school students are not at par with their counterparts abroad. That’s why some countries require Filipinos to at least finish two years of college to fill the gap before hiring them. It is not called globalization, it is called international competitiveness. Filipino high school graduates are incompetent, as far as the international standards are concerned.
It is easy to say that number of years is not the measurement to determine one’s competitiveness. But not all Filipino students are treated equally. That’s why there’s a need to accelerate students. Given the 12-K system, there should be a provision to accelerate the years of brilliant and deserving students.