The K-12 education system in the Philippines has met with so much criticism

and conflict from various local sectors. Many parents grumble about the
added costs; teachers protest against potential job loss; and critics question
the country’s ability to handle the program.

Is the K-12 education system really this adverse? Not at all. Though most of
these reasons are valid and sound, many of them are groundless and
misleading, too. So before you believe in anything your friend or neighbor tells
you, make sure you read on these facts first.

What You Should Know

Aiming to disprove all unfounded rumors about the new system, the
Department of Education comes forward to inform the public of the country’s
new education program. Go through some of them below:

Myth # 1 : Senior high school (grades 11 to 12) is

an alternative to college education.
The K-12 program is not an alternative rather than a strong foundation that
preps students for both higher education and employment. The new system’s
basic curriculum is in agreement with CHED’s College Readiness Standards,
which sets skills required for further education and future work. Upon
completion, graduates will receive Certificates of Competency (COCs) and
National Certifications (NCs). With the program, K-12 graduates may or may
not opt to pursue college learning.

Myth # 2 : K-12 graduates are no-match with

college graduates when it comes to employment
opportunities.
DepEd teamed up with various business groups, foreign and local chambers
of commerce to ensure they give K-12 graduates equal chances and jobs. As
always, the labor market is all about matching their job vacancies to the
applicants’ skills and education. Hence, the government designed their senior
high school curriculum to hone students’ skills for a gainful future employment.
Myth # 3 : With the stiff race in the job market, K-
12 graduates might end up becoming jobless.
K-12 has an enhanced program of study, which also fosters entrepreneurship.
This allows skilled K-12 graduates to venture into other opportunities when
they are unable to seek employment.

Myth # 4 : DepEd is not yet ready for this shift.

DepEd has been building classrooms, hiring teachers, preparing learning
materials, and developing the K-12 curriculum since 2010. As of 2015, all the
220 divisions of the DepEd have finished planning and are now finalizing
these plans with other stakeholders.

Do you still want to know more about the Philippine academe’s K-12
program? Keep yourself updated. Browse through our other articles for more
info.

Debunking K to 12 myths
President Aquino says 'the credentials of our countrymen working overseas are already
being questioned' because they lack K to 12 education. Reality is against the
government's claim.

David Michael San Juan

Published 11:00 AM, June 13, 2016

Updated 2:55 PM, June 13, 2016

1K

Twitter

Reddit

Email

1K
Philippine government officials repeat two tired catchphrases to justify the
imposition of K to 12: “global competitiveness” and labor export.

It must be reiterated that in the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI) Report
2014, there are actually 70 countries poorer than our republic. Only two of those 70
countries – Angola and Djibouti – are non-K to 12 countries.

In his last State of the Nation Address (2015), President Benigno Aquino III claimed,
“The credentials of our countrymen working overseas are already being questioned;
there are also some who have been demoted because our diplomas are supposedly not
proof of sufficient knowledge.”

Filipinos are in demand everywhere

–– ADVERTISEMENT ––

Reality is against the government’s claim.

For example, even without K to 12, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service
(NHS) actively recruits Filipino nurses, with UK agents directly going to the Philippines
to seek nursing graduates that will fill in around 24,000 vacancies as of 2016.
Government-approved London nursing vacancies accept any nursing graduate with just
a year of work experience. No mention of a senior high school diploma!

A Singaporean newspaper reports (2013) that “Filipino professionals head to Singapore

as tourists to seek jobs,” and do land good-paying jobs – a monthly salary of $2,000
way above the average salary of a college graduate in the Philippines ($400) – even
without K to 12 diplomas.

A cursory check of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) website

yields thousands of still active job vacancies (posted from 2013 to 2016) for Filipino
engineers, teachers/professors, chemists, social workers, architects, agriculturists,
dentists, foresters, geologists, guidance counselors, interior designers, librarians,
master plumbers, medical technologists, doctors, midwives, nutritionists, optometrists,
pharmacists, therapists, psychologists, radiologists, and veterinarians – professions
regulated by the Philippines’ Professional Regulatory Commission.

Hence, even without K to 12, Filipino workers/professionals are in demand everywhere.

The number of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) deployed by the POEA soared to
1,832,668 in 2014 (roughly 5,000 deployed daily) from 1,470,826 in 2010 (roughly 4,000
deployed daily).

Even prior to the implementation of the K to 12 scheme, the Philippines was Southeast
Asia’s biggest remittance receiver – second only to China in the Asia-Pacific region.
From 1962-2012, the Philippines also ranked worst in Southeast Asia with regard to net
migration – more people leaving than entering the country. Every country in these
regions is K to 12-compliant.

Considering that K to 12 and labor export complement each other, the country’s
economy will be further reliant on remittances from OFWs once this educational scheme
is fully implemented.

Will K to 12 resolve unemployment?

Elementary students get handed their papers in an overloaded classroom

during the first day of school at the President Corazon Aquino Elementary
School in Quezon city, east suburban Manila, Philippines, 02 June 2014.
Photo by Dennis Sabangan/EPA
Historically, except for a few years between 1991 and 2013, the Philippines has ranked
first in Southeast Asia in terms of unemployment. However, some K to 12-compliant
countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Timor Leste, and Laos have more vulnerable
workers (“unpaid family workers and own-account workers”) than the Philippines.

As K to 12 is meant to further encourage Filipinos to go abroad, we ask: is labor export

a good policy? The article “Pambansang Salbabida at Kadena ng Dependensiya: Isang
Kritikal na Pagsusuri sa Labor Export Policy (LEP) ng Pilipinas”/ National Lifesaver and
Chains of Dependence: A Critical Review of the Philippine Labor Export Policy (LEP)
tackles this.

Why exporting more OFWs is bad

As per World Bank data, the Philippine manufacturing sector contributed only 21% to
the GDP from 2010 to 2012 and in 2014, and a percentage point lower in 2013,
compared with an average of 25.2% from 1980 to 1984, a few years after the Labor
Export Policy was adopted.

According to World Bank data, remittances’ contribution to the GDP averaged 10.14%
from 2010 to 2014 – a certain leap from an average of 2.52% from 1980 to 1984. During
much of the same period (1999-2014), the Philippines’ balance of payments was
consistently negative (more imports than exports).

In other words, as Prod Laquian, professor emeritus of human settlements planning at

the University of British Columbia, eloquently puts it: “The most serious negative effect
of labour export policies has been the neglect of domestic production and poor
investments in infrastructure, agriculture, mining, export promotion, and social
development because of the easy availability of funds from remittances.... For the
government, the easy money from foreign remittances is a major cause of its inability to
pursue sound economic development programs.”

Comparable with the Philippine context is Nepal’s remittance-driven economy, in

contrast with the economies of a number of industrialized or semi-industrialized
countries in Asia (South Korea, Malaysia, China). Like the Philippines, Nepal’s
manufacturing sector is also weak, while that of South Korea, Malaysia, and China is
robust.

Industrialization: Alternative to labor export

Resource-rich countries like the Philippines can’t develop or achieve high levels of
progress if they don’t industrialize as by Ha-Joon Chang’s “Bad Samaritans: The Myth
of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism” and Alejandro Lichauco’s
“Nationalist Economics: History, Theory, and Practice.” The Philippine government’s
decision to add two more years of high school to further expand Labor Export Policy –
rather than align the education system with the goal to industrialize the country and
strive for economic self-reliance as much as possible – is bad.

Labor export = brain drain. A UK research concluded that brain drain holds back
economic growth in the country. The Philippines’ brain drain problem is more acute in
the Science and Technology sector, leading a top Department of Science and
Technology official to say “We need more of our S&T (Science and Technology) R&D
(Research and Development) professionals to be here in our country to provide the
lifeline of our research and development agenda. Our country currently stands at 165
R&D personnel per million Filipinos, which is way below the UNESCO recommendation
of 380 needed for economic development.”

Even supporters of the K to 12 program – such as Masayoshi Okabe of the Japan-

based Institute of Developing Economies – admit that enhancement of secondary
education “alone could very well further the brain drain (or worse still, lead to further
“brain waste [Spring 2009: 188-190)].” Hence, “along with improving education, the
government needs to encourage industrial development and growth of domestic
industries that can provide employment for higher educated school graduates.”

Jose Maria Sison notes: “A K-12 program, properly oriented, planned, and managed,
could lead to genuine reforms that will truly benefit the Filipino people and youth in the
realm of education. A truly patriotic, mass-oriented, and scientific educational system
will be able to train millions of youth, help empower the people and build their nation
through heightened social consciousness, scientific knowledge and technical skills.”

Unless K to 12’s framework is reoriented toward the objective of developing the country,
rather than expanding labor export, it is clear that K to 12 will just be another failure.

Practical alternative to K to 12

In the only quantitative research on the issue of length of the school cycle and quality of
education, professors Abraham Felipe and Carolina Porio point out a practical
alternative: “There is no clear empirical basis in TIMSS to justify a proposal for the
Philippines to lengthen its education cycle.... There is no basis to expect that
lengthening the educational cycle calendar-wise will improve the quality of education....
The value of the 12-year cycle is ultimately a matter of weighing the large and certain
costs against the uncertain gains in lengthening the education cycle.... The government
could help those interested in foreign studies and work placement by supporting an
appropriate system of assessment, rather than tinker with the whole cycle length. This
solution addresses the alleged problem in a more focused way and does not
indiscriminately impose on every Filipino the costs of meeting the needs of a few.”

With regard to foreign studies, even without K to 12, Filipinos are able to gain
acceptance in prestigious scholarships abroad such as the European Union’s Erasmus
Mundus Programme. According to the European Union, from 2004 to 2014, “more than
200 students and lecturers [from the Philippines] benefitted from the programme.”
Yearly, dozens of Filipinos also benefit from the United States-based Fulbright program.

Immediate socio-economic reforms needed

The additional budget that would be allotted to the K to 12 scheme will be better spent
on improving the current 11-year Basic Education cycle first. Measures to improve the
old basic education cycle should include:

 Salary hikes for teachers and staff (teachers’ salaries in the Philippines are
so low that teachers resort to exploitative and, at times, murderous loan
sharks to make both ends meet)
 Modernization of all facilities (the K to 12 curriculum – in many subjects –
talks about technology, blogs, internet, etc, but a visit to the typical public
will immediately make you realize K to 12 fails on its own standards)
 Wiping out of all backlogs in personnel, facilities, and instructional
materials (go visit the nearest public school, ask a public school teacher,
check the Facebook page of teachers’ organizations like the Alliance of
Concerned Teachers and ACT Teachers’ Partylist)
 Full-blast teacher training (considering that even a number of our teachers
lack sufficient English, Math, and Science skills)

Debates on whether to add two more years in high school should start once the 11-year
Basic Education cycle from Kindergarten to Grade 10 is perfected.

Additional investments in the tertiary level and R&D are also important. The Philippines
lags behind many countries when it comes to R&D expenditures, hence the country is
also weak in innovation and modernization of technologies in education and other fields.

Additional budget for the tertiary level is important in ensuring that more students will
finish their schooling. It has been proven that the “rate of return” of investment in
studying in college and beyond is huge. Moreover, as a World Bank study points out,
“tertiary education is to a large extent a prerequisite for highly-paid occupations.”

We reiterate that job opportunities within the country must be broadened through
implementing a comprehensive economic plan that focuses on self-reliance or self-
dependence. This can be done through national industrialization, agrarian reform, and
modernization of agriculture – policies which have been tackled and discussed in detail
by many Filipino thinkers and social movements throughout the country’s recent history
(Recto, c.1959; Hernandez, 1982; Lichauco, 1986 and 2005; Constantino, 1995;
Salgado, 1997; Sison, 1998; Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas/KMP, 2009; Bagong
Alyansang Makabayan/BAYAN, 2011).Ads by AdAsia
Agrarian reform will strengthen the financial capability of the country’s peasant majority,
and consequently expand the domestic market while supplying it with basic raw
materials too. Thus, agrarian reform will complement any industrialization endeavor.

The role of the education system in transforming the country into a developed
archipelago should be obvious by now: innovations in agriculture and industry –
expectedly accelerated by schools, universities, and research centers aligned with the
country’s development objectives – will enable the country to swiftly achieve national
and sustainable development, based on the common good rather than corporate profit.

The requisite perfection of K to 10, and the revival of vital subjects abolished by K to 12
– such as Philippine History in high school, and Filipino, Literature and Philippine
Government and Constitution in college – should at least be pursued, if a national
development-oriented education system will be achieved. These programs are
anchored on the Philippines’ capability to utilize its resources for its own citizens’
progress, and not merely as exports to other countries. – Rappler.com

A Brunei-born Filipino citizen, David Michael San Juan serves as associate professor at
De La Salle University-Manila.

K to 12: More than just

decongesting the
curriculum
By: Ricardo Ma. Duran Nolasco - @inquirerdotnet

Philippine Daily Inquirer / 10:47 PM June 08, 2012

A few days ago, Deputy Majority Leader Magtanggol Gunigundo of

Valenzuela City sent me an e-mail about the K to 12 bill pending at the
15th Congress and its repercussions to mother tongue-based multilingual
education (MTBMLE). The measure was taken up at the joint meeting of
the committees on higher education and on basic education with
Education Secretary Armin Luistro and Commission on Higher Education
Chair Patricia Licuanan in attendance.
At that meeting, Representative Gunigundo asked Secretary Luistro to
show any research evidence to support the Department of Education’s
position for an “early-exit” model on first language (L1) instruction. This
weak model provides for the use of the learners’ L1 as the medium of
instruction (MOI) up to Grade 3 only, after which learners are abruptly
shifted to English and Filipino as teaching mediums. Critics of this model
have amply demonstrated that it takes six to eight years of L1 instruction
before learners develop their literacy and academic skills in that
language. This “six to eight” model of L1 instruction is called a “late-exit”
model because learners are also taught one or two second languages (L2)
to prepare them for high school where the L2 eventually become the
primary MOI.

Luistro admitted that DepEd did not have any research data to back its
position and that he was not prepared to declare that an early-exit
scheme was superior to a long-exit program. He then said that he was
open to the idea of expanding L1 instruction throughout the basic
education cycle and of deleting any wording in the bill that would peg L1
instruction to an early exit program.
ADVERTISEMENT

Luistro was also surprised to learn that the 10-year basic curriculum was
decongested not too long ago in 2002. Since K to 12 desires to decongest
the curriculum, Gunigundo requested DepEd to show the joint committee
what the old curriculum was, how it was decongested in 2002, and how it
would be further decongested by K to 12.

In an apparent reversal of position, Luistro informed the joint committee

that under the K to 12 curriculum, science and math would be introduced
as separate subjects beginning Grade 1. According to him, the practice of
embedding science in other subjects like English and offering it as a
separate subject only in Grade 3 will be discontinued.
The discussion then turned to the qualifications of mentors in teaching
science and math. Gunigundo pointed out that many science and math
teachers lacked the necessary training to teach these subjects, and that
one reason for this was these teachers were being educated by professors
whose advanced degrees were in school administration and not in
science and math, as shown in a UP National Institute on Science and
Mathematics Education study. Licuanan opined that CHEd’s policy of
requiring college professors in teachers’ colleges to have master’s or
doctorate degrees might have boomeranged on them since college
professors themselves were not specializing in their content areas.

Education reform advocates have expressed serious concerns that the

essential components of a strong MTBMLE methodology are not evident
in the K to 12 curriculum. They point out that:

Ongoing reform efforts notwithstanding, language remains the key to

improving student achievement. All other reforms would most likely
have the same results as those developed within the old bilingual setup if
MTBMLE is not built into the curriculum plan.

Curriculum reform will be strengthened through planned use and

development of the learners’ L1 throughout the entire educational
process. This means that the K to 12 curriculum is not merely a matter of
decongesting the old curriculum but of forming a new curriculum based
on a different perspective and starting point.

The K to 12 curriculum should move away from a reading-based L2

curriculum which is not appropriate for learners who have not yet
gained fluency in L1 literacy.

Overt integration of the learner’s linguistic and cultural world view into
the curriculum should replace foreign content (e.g. English songs, poems,
rhymes, word examples, etc.) that do not reflect or build on what the
learners know.  Foreign literature and culture will be well developed at a
later time in the curriculum, after time for L1 development and initial
skill building in L2 oral communication.
ADVERTISEMENT

Most DepEd personnel are still grappling with how teaching proceeds in
an MTBMLE system. This is something brand-new and cannot be
accomplished well if pushed quickly. Additional time is also required to
adequately train teachers in MTBMLE methodology and the new
curriculum.

While there are many experts able to consult on developing the

curriculum, input practitioners who bring experience and knowledge
related to MTBMLE implementation would seem to be necessary and
practical.

This year will prove historic for Filipino learners because it heralds the
shift to an entirely new learning paradigm, one that is truly learner-
centered and culture- and context-sensitive. This time, there is no turning
back.

Ricardo Ma. Duran Nolasco, PhD ([email protected]) is an

associate professor at the Department of Linguistics in UP Diliman.

Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/30287/k-to-12-more-than-just-decongesting-
the-curriculum#ixzz4lB5d6piE 
Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook