K to 12 is like Dengvaxia

My youngest daughter is now in her second year in college. She would have been in a fourth year college graduating class by now. But she belongs to the nationwide pioneering batch of K to 12 graduates who, as it turned out, wasted two years of time, money and effort learning practically nothing of consequence.

As the school directress of the high school she went to was eventually forced to admit at an assessment meeting just prior to graduating their pioneering K to 12 Class of 2018, it was all "hit or miss" for them and for the students. Class 2018, in other words, made up the sacrificial lambs of the K to 12 Program that, like the anti-dengue vaccine Dengvaxia, was hastily implemented by the previous Aquino government.

Now, I am not against K to 12. I believe all education is good. And properly implemented, K to 12 would be a great boost to the country's bid to catch up with international standards in basic education. But at the time it was implemented in 2016, the educational landscape in the Philippines was not ready for K to 12.

Like Dengvaxia, K to 12 was rushed by Noynoy Aquino. Despite bold pronouncements by his education secretary at the time, there just were not enough classrooms and facilities to accommodate students who, instead of going on to college, would remain in their schools for senior high, thereby putting a strain on already scant resources.

And there were no qualified and competent teachers to handle senior high for Class 2018. All that went into the resumes of these teachers were a couple of weeks of seminars and that was it.

The education of tens of thousands of the pioneering K to 12 Class of 2018 was sacrificed just so Noynoy can have his legacy of having introduced K to 12. Just like Dengvaxia and the legacy of putting an end to dengue.

But why am I bringing up K to 12 again? Well, partly because Dengvaxia is in the air again, reminding me of how the haste in its implementation completely matches the haste in the introduction of K to 12. It is a haste born of a consuming desire to claim credit. I am bringing up the matter also because the Department of Education is soon to be investigated, yet again, by the Senate, owing to its dismal performance.

According to a Commission on Audit report, the DepEd has been remiss in implementing critical programs. This despite consistently getting the lion's share of the national budget so it can implement what needs to be implemented.

So you see, here we have an agency that hastily puts into action a program such as K to 12 when it is not yet ready, and then fails to implement what it already had been funded to implement.

As per COA's findings, the DepEd was supposed to build 47,000 new classrooms in 2018 but built only 11. That's right, 11, ha ha ha. It was supposed to distribute 39 million textbooks but distributed only 12 million. Nearly four million instructional materials bought from 2014 to 2017 are rotting in DepEd warehouses. Science and math packages for K to 12 in 2018 remain undelivered. Maybe "tokhang" is better than a probe.