Most countries have only ten years of compulsory education.
Compulsory education in the US varies from state to state, but the
average requires anyone who is under 16 years of age to be either
enrolled in a school or home-schooled. This means that on average, the
US only has 10- 11 (including kindergarten) years of compulsory
education. The last two years in the US K-12 education already include
courses in tertiary education. These are called advanced placement (AP)
or international baccalaureate (IB) courses. Examples are calculus (up
to multivariable) and AP chemistry. Students who take AP chemistry
usually have already finished one year of basic chemistry and one year
of advanced chemistry, so in sum, a student could have taken three years
of chemistry while in high school. Some schools in the US can not offer
these, and consequently, there is great heterogeneity among US schools.
The administration’s plan is a plain insult to poor parents and
students who are trying hard to make ends meet. As it is, families can
barely afford to get their kids through 10 years of education. Aquino is
being insensitive to the plight of majority of the Filipino people,
and we may need to remind the president that unlike him, not everyone
is born landlords or business tycoons.
We are aware that while there is no tuition fees being paid in public
schools, there are fees and expenses that parents have to shoulder to
get students through school. Last year, the government allotted only
P2,502 a year, or P6.85 per student per day for education. More than
P30,000-P35,000 is needed for school fees, fare and food expenses per
year. Poor parents are not able to afford this as proven by the rising
drop-out rates.
Addressing basic education is a matter of prioritization. Adding
kindergarten and two years to high school is estimated to cost more than
100 billion pesos. On the other hand, to solve the two pressing
problems, as UNESCO has advised, 6% of the GDP must be assigned to
education. At the current funding (2.3% of GDP) of the Department of
Education (DepEd), additional years will only lead to a greater demand
for resources. Adding two years to high school essentially increases the
needs of a high school by 50% – teachers, classrooms, desks, toilets,
learning materials, etc. The DepEd can only answer less than half of
what UNESCO deems is necessary for the 10-year basic education program.
Adding two more years will stretch the budget of DepEd even further.
Implementing a new curriculum requires strong leadership at the
school level. The success of a school depends a lot on the principal. A
significant fraction of public schools in the Philippines currently do
not have a principal or a head teacher. This clearly needs to be
addressed first before any reform in curriculum is initiated. Otherwise,
a new curriculum has no hope of being implemented successfully.
Instead of trying to attack the problem at the end of high school,
efforts must be focused on the early years of education. This is where
the dropout rate begins to escalate and these are the years where
students are failing to learn as diagnosed by the standard test scores.
Resources are very much needed in the first ten years of education and
kindergarten and DepEd can do a better job on these years if DepEd does
not have to worry about the added senior years in high school. The
government should allow its citizens to work out on their own a solution
for the desired two years that aim to prepare students either for
college or the workforce. College preparatory schools or community
colleges can do this job and TESDA could address those who are leaning
towards vocational training.
During the past years, only 4 out of 10 students entering the school
cycle manages to finish high school, and only one will be able to get a
degree. More than 8 million Filipino school aged youth are
out-of-school because of hardships.
The additional two years will mean additional burden to the poor
families and will lead to more students dropping-out and more young
Filipinos being deprived of their right to education.
For any overwhelming policy that involves dramatic changes and budget
requirements, it is important that the policy is based on good data and
statistics. The Philippines, with its financial condition, cannot
afford to waste. The ten-year basic education program can work as
demonstrated by a Philippine school in Qatar (see “Do Filipino schools
make the grade?”.
The Philippine school at Doha, Qatar participated in PISA 2009 and
their scores were: Science (466), Math: (461) and Reading: (480). These
scores place the Philippines near the average scores of participating
countries.
It is amazing how the proponents of this program could stand firm on
their twisted analysis that adding years to the current education
system will solve the problem of quality.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that no matter how
many years they add to education, as long as classroom to student ratio
remains 1:70, as long as there are no textbooks or they are riddled
with errors, as long as teachers are underpaid, and facilities remain
dilapidated, no improvement in quality can be expected.
The budget for DepEd proposed this year will not be enough to address
the shortages in facilities and stop the deteriorating condition of
our schools. The government aims to acquire only 18,000 new classrooms
out of the 152,000 needed, 10,000 new teachers out of 103,599 shortage,
and only 32 million new textbooks out of 95 million shortage.
The problems concerning basic education that developing countries
face are enormous and complex. A few years from now, the international
donor community will look at how close governments they have funded to
improve education have reached the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).
It is highly likely that the Philippines will not meet the second item
in the MDG, universal primary education:
The K12 proponents try to further amuse the public by promising that
the 12 year cycle will make the youth “employable” and that this will
enable the young people get jobs. This is a ridiculous claim as the
more than 500,000 college graduates annually do not manage to get jobs.
There are no jobs not because there is a lack of “employable” young
people but because there is no clear plan for national development
which will lead to sustainable job generation.
The statements, however, expose what the real intention of the
government for this project. The program is primarily designed to serve
foreign needs for cheap “semiskilled” labor. The K12 project is a being
pushed by foreign banks and companies for them to be able to profit by
further exploiting our people.
The proponents do not deny the fact that this is in fact a
foreign-recommended plan. Miguel Luz, one of the main advocates of the
program, is consulting for and working for the World Bank projects in
the Philippines.
Is it
“matuwid” to model Filipino education system after
foreign needs? Isn’t education supposed to be for the people and for
national development?
