DepEd goes K+12

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Education (DepEd) boldly started its ambitious K (Kindergarten) to 12 basic education curriculum program in 2011 despite budget and resource shortages in public schools.

Education Secretary Armin Luistro said the initial rollout of the K+12 basic education program with the implementation of universal primary or pre-school education for five-year-olds in the Philippines was a “defining moment” for the administration of President Aquino, as it seeks to implement reforms with deep impact on the welfare of Filipino children and the youth.

“The implementation of K to 12 beginning with our 2011 kinder enrollment of 1.7 million is a defining moment in our care for 5-year-old children and will surely have a significant impact in our achieving the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education,” he said.

Despite all the criticisms hurled at the initial implementation of the program, Luistro stressed that it was a showcase of political will by the Aquino administration in pursuit of real education reforms.

However, teachers’ groups such as the Teachers Dignity Coalition and the Alliance of Concerned Teachers lambasted DepEd over the implementation of the program, saying inadequate funds allotted to the set-up of kindergarten schools prevented DepEd from building enough classrooms and compensate kindergarten school teachers properly.

But Luistro rationalized that his department “achieved a highly satisfactory level of about 85 percent in our first year of implementation as problems and/or shortages are confined to less than 5 percent of elementary schools.”

“Any educational reform initiative requires political will and will never be perfect,” he noted.

But with DepEd getting a budget of more than P31 billion for 2012, the Education secretary vowed to address all these problems in the coming years.

DepEd started the public kindergarten schools in the opening of school year 2011-2012 last June, serving as the initial salvo of its K+12 program, which aims to add two years of senior high school to the current 10-year basic education curriculum which has only six years of elementary and four years of high school, aside from the compulsory pre-school for students entering Grade 1.

Luistro earlier stressed that the universal kindergarten program component of K+12 was for the country to meet the Education For All goal by improving the participation rate among students.

Making pre-school or kindergarten mandatory, he said, was a strategy in meeting the Education For All goal, in view of studies that showed a child’s going through pre-school resulted in better learning competencies to prepare him or her for entering Grade 1.

Studies have shown that children unprepared for learning in Grade 1 were prone to drop out eventually.

LEARNING CURVE: New school buildings of the New Ormoc City National High School(top) and Sibol school in Leyte.

The next phase of K+12 will be launched middle of 2012 when DepEd introduces the enhanced curriculum for Grade 7.

The opening of school year 2012-2013 will be the launch of Grade 7, which is basically the current first year high school level.

DepEd, under the Aquino administration and the leadership of Luistro, has shown its determination in adding two years to the basic education curriculum, seeing it as a vital reform measure that will solve deficiencies in core competencies in the subjects of English, Math and Science among a majority of Filipino high school graduates, as well as to gain recognition for Filipino professionals among employers abroad.

The Philippines is one of only two countries in the world that has a 10-year basic education curriculum. The other is fellow Third World country Myanmar.

A consequence of the 10-year basic education curriculum of the country is the unwillingness of companies abroad to recognize Filipino professionals such as engineers and nurses, demanding that these professionals go through additional schooling and then undergo licensure examinations before being recognized as engineers, nurses and accountants.

Not just K + 12

Aside from the rollout of the public kindergarten schools, Luistro said DepEd posted other significant achievements this year.

He said that the Aquino administration’s promptness in passing an appropriations budget for 2011 and 2012 enabled DepEd to “obligate” funds for the building of classrooms and the procurement of textbooks.

Education Secretary Armin Luistro reads to a class of attentive students.

“The textbook budget for 2010 and 2011 have been obligated and delivery to schools will commence by first quarter of 2012, achieving 1:1 student-to-textbook ratio for each of the five core subjects by June 2012,” Luistro projected.

He also expressed confidence in the DepEd’s capability to push through with K+12 and address the shortage of resources in public schools with a more than P31-billion increase in their budget for 2012, from P207 billion in 2011 to P238.8 billion in 2012.

“DepEd intends to address the current requirements and shortages in the next two years so that it can focus its resources in later years towards addressing the significant resource requirements for the full implementation of K to 12 in 2016,” Luistro said earlier.