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A REVIEW ON THE ISSUES IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF K+12 SCIENCE

CURRICULUM: A BASELINE STUDY

Technical Report · March 2015

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.10755.30249

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 A REVIEW ON THE ISSUES IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF K+12 SCIENCE
CURRICULUM: A BASELINE STUDY

Prof. Diamer B. Capilitan

Marilou V. Cabili
Fernando R. Sequete Jr.
______________________________________________________________________________

Abstract
This study aims to review the problems on the issues in the implementation of K+12
Science Curriculum. The study focused on the Biology part of the science curriculum. The study
used Purpose Sampling in choosing the participants of the study. The participants are the in-service
teachers who are teaching science in the K+12 curriculum. The main tool to answer the questions
posted from this study was the Open-Ended Questionnaire. The questionnaire has seven (7)
questions.
The study showed that there was decongestion of the topics for all areas of science
especially the Biology. It shows that decongestion has to do with the retention and possible
increase of knowledge to students. The teachers identified the main role of the module, activities,
and time for the success of the implementation of the new curriculum. Module and activities are
demanding and time problem floated as a result of the delay of the matrix of schedule to finish the
lesson. Also, it was pointed out that the previous lessons are very essential in order to build up the
knowledge to be connected to the next lesson. Further, it was emphasized the strengthening of the
basic concepts from lower years so that the students and teachers will have their smooth
mainstreaming to the next lesson.

Introduction
The educational system of the Philippines is still on the process of renewing for some
factors identified. The people in the education sector are trying their best in addressing the needs
of the people and trying their best in giving the Filipino people a quality education that could bring
from a progressive individual to a progressive country. Curriculum is a dynamic agent in the
aspect of education and that is very evident as the Filipino students are in the course of adjusting
their educational arena to fit it to the present design of our curriculum ― K+12 Curriculum. The
new curriculum is the result of the 3-year mediation of the people in the education sector. The
curriculum was subjected to tedious and complex processes before it has been put in place in the
education arena.
Faced with stiffer economic competition and worried about the skills of the future work
forces, the government lead by the President of the Philippines and his Department of Education
Secretary are trying to connect education from preschool through post-secondary so that more
students are prepared for further study and work.
In October 5, 2010, the recent program on Philippine Education as part of President
Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III’s Educational Reform Program was the instituting of the K+12
Education Plan. From his ten (10) point Educational agenda he cited: “12 – Years Basic Education
Cycle I will expand the basic education cycle, from a 10-year cycle to a globally comparable 12
years, for our public school children. At present, those who can afford basic education get into the
best universities and the best jobs after graduation. Universal pre-schooling for all public schools
children will have pre-school as their introduction to formal schooling by 2016, and we will make
this available to all children regardless of income.”
The Pnoy Administration believes that adding more years to basic education in the
Philippines could help solve the problems of unemployment, keep with global standards, and help
Filipino students to have more time to choose the career that best suits their skills.
Psychologically speaking, the short education program affects human development of the
Filipino children. A Filipino is legally a child before he or she turns 18 years old. Psychologists
and educators say that children under 18 are generally not emotionally prepared for
entrepreneurship or employment or higher education disciplines. Commonly, Grade six pupils
graduates at the range of 15-17 years old. Therefore, these learners are still considered children
and they are not capable to handle serious situations like decision-making and work task. In the
Philippines, there is a harvesting practice which is called, “Hinog sa Bunga”, meaning a fruit which
was taken from the trunk of the tree. The ripened fruits which were taken from the trunk of the tree
are more sweet and tasty compared to fruits which were taken ahead of time.
The goal of the K+12 Basic Education Program is to create a functional basic education
system that will produce productive and responsible citizens equipped with the essential
competencies and skills for both life – long learning and employment. This program will enhance
the basic education system to full functionality to fulfill basic learning needs of students. This is
in line with the agenda of the President Aquino of having quality education as a long – term
solution to poverty, in order to achieve these goals. The program has the following twin objectives:
(1) To give every student an opportunity to receive quality education based on an enhanced and
decongested curriculum that is internationally recognized and comparable; (2) Develop a
curriculum that is rational and focus on excellence; (3) produce a pool of highly qualified and
adequately trained teachers; (4) Achieve high academic standards, especially in mathematics,
Science, and English at all levels; (5) Produce graduates who are globally competitive and whose
credential are recognized internationally; (6) To change public perception that high school
education is just a preparation for college; rather, it should allow one to take advantage of
opportunities for gainful career or employment and/or self-employment in a rapidly changing and
increasingly globalized environment; (7) Produce graduates who possess skills and competencies
that will allow them to be productive members of the society or pursue higher education through
coordination between the academic and business sectors, to change industry hiring practices to
account the enhance skills and competencies of K+12 graduates (Discussion Paper, 2010).
The operation of our educational system revolves around laws legislated by congress. The
primary source of these laws is the 1987 constitution. A separate Article of education is provided
in the 1987 constitution. It prescribes that the state shall assign the highest budgetary priority to
education and ensures that teaching will attract and retain its rightful share of the best available
talents through adequate remuneration and other means of job satisfaction and fulfillment
(Nolledo, 1992).
The newly implemented curriculum of the country is a product of many reactions stipulated
from the mouth of our own government. Senator opposes proposed DepEd K+12 program. Senate
Majority Floor Leader Vicente “Tito” Sotto explained why he opposed the proposal of the
Department of Education (DepEd) to amend the law on the country’s basic education to increase
the number of school years to 12 from the present 10-year program. Sotto said, “I oppose the
addition of two years to basic education. There is no clear benefit to adding two year to basic
education”, in a privilege speech at the Senate. He added that the national budget can’t even
provide sufficient funds to maintain the present number of years of basic education, but now the
DepEd wants to add more to it. Kabataan Patylist Rep. Raymond Palatino called this move by
Education Secretary Armin Luistro a “delusions of grandeur”. He said that in a poverty-stricken
country like the Philippines, the implementation of the K+12 was a “question of survival”,
especially for parents who could barely send their children to school. He added that this new
education plan will not address the escalating number of out-of-school youths, nor lift the
employment rate, because the real problem is the low employment opportunities. Senators Chiz
Escudero was also against the implementation of the K+12 Education plan. Escudero pointed out
that it is not in the length of educational years, but the quality of education a student can acquire.
And this has to begin by training teachers to be competitive, create more classrooms and improve
learning facilities, and provide budget for textbooks.
The introduction of this new curriculum to schools harvested many comments and even
judging it to a negative way. This reaction is primarily because of the approach that is embedded
in the curriculum, which is the spiral progression approach. One of the highlights of the curriculum
is the decongestion of the topics for the better understanding and retention to students. In contrast
to the old curriculum, the topics are being compressed to satisfy the need of the subject to be
finished in one year. The result of this is the less retention and understanding to the topics. That is
one of the reasons of the existence of this new paradigm.
For the reason of curiosity, this paper is molded from the reactions of different sectors in
the society. The main concern of the one particular group, the teachers, is the distribution of topics.
According to them, there are lapses and discrepancies on the distribution of topics in Science, for
example. This paper determines if the teachers are following the module specified, the difficulties
and challenges that the teachers encountered in the course of the implementation of the K+12
curriculum. Also, the factors identified through which contribute to the difficulties and challenges
in implementing the new curriculum. In addition, this paper identifies the presence of decongestion
of the topics which is one of the highlights of the present curriculum and it evaluates the
mechanism of the science curriculum, especially the Biology part of the K+12 science curriculum.
Lastly, it talks about the strengths of the implemented curriculum.

Method
The study was conducted from the in-service teachers of various schools. The study used
the Purposive Sampling for the identification of the participants. The researchers considered the
availability of the teachers since the study was conducted during the last two weeks of March 2015.
The teachers are from STI-Iligan, Iligan City National High School, Cugman National High
School, Clarin National High School, Mulogan National High School, DMC Science High School,
and PRIOS International Christian School.
The main tool of the study was the open-ended questionnaire. It has seven (7) questions
that would answer the problems posed by the researchers to this paper. This is a baseline study that
could give the researchers an overview of the real world in the implementation of the curriculum.
The questions were gathered through the ideas of the researchers that could initiate another step in
unveiling the “question mark” that our peoples are raising.

Results
The following are the data gathered through the open-ended questionnaire.

Following the Module

Most of the teachers followed the module specified to the grade that they are teaching. One
of the teachers said that in their school they are trying to follow the module. They encountered too
much problems due to time constraint and because of that they can only finish the third and fourth
module instead of taking the six (6) modules for that particular grading period. Surprisingly, the
remaining two modules of the previous grading period will be then discussed to the next grading
period before starting the specified topics for that grading period. That is just to complete the six
modules. That’s the main reason why there is what we call time constraint. It is not possible for
the teachers to follow the modules perfectly and timely since they really have to finish the number
of modules for that particular grading period.

Difficulties and Challenges in the Implementation of the Curriculum

There main concerns are the modules and the knowledge that the students get from the
previous lessons (previous grading period). Ocampo (2015) emphasized the difficulty in finishing
the modules as presented by the curriculum since not all topics can be covered due to limited
materials and proper facilities in performing a particular science activity, and lack of time in
teaching a particular topic that will tend to pace over just to cover the module that may result to
superficial learning of the students.
According to Romulo (2015), students have hard time to relate the topics they learned
from their previous year level to the present topics. They even have less retention rate to the
previous topic that needs for a teacher to reintroduce and discuss the concept. Romulo (2015)
identified two factors that contributed this major challenge that she encountered during the course
of implementation of the curriculum. First, lack of materials, especially during experiment. The
education sector proposed to have the highest budgetary partition for the new education program.
It has been identified that since the country is trying to mold the students to be internationalized
when it comes to skills and knowledge it must be first portrayed to the school for that goal to be
attained. Second, teachers have difficulty in teaching some concept not related to her/his major.
This is the first issue that was raised by the teachers who are not into the other majors of science.
They tend to teach the lesson literally based on what they understand. And this is a big issue then
to the learning of the students. It is a burden for the teachers to know the concept of the other major
(parallel to the lesson) and discussed it to an alien language. It is expected then that this will give
rise to another difficulty and this time for the part of the students.
Another teacher, Capangpangan (2015), highlighted the level of the activities for all the
lessons. According to him, the activities are demanding in such a way that there are materials that
are not accessible to everyone. Also, he pointed out that the activities are very time consuming and
the time will be doubled by the time the students don’t have the prior knowledge for the present
lesson to be extracted. He stressed out that it is very much dragging since there is a need for the
reintroduction of the past lesson for the present lesson be achieved. So, the class, according to him,
is now a review center. The time will be consumed just for reviewing the previous discussions.

Decongestion of the Biology Topics in the K+12 Curriculum

Decongestion has been a highlight feature of the new curriculum. Fortunately, all of them
are saying that there is an evident decongestion of topics presented in the K+12 Curriculum. Some
of them pointed out that decongestion will be a great help in the aspect of retention and learning
of the students since there will be a concentration given for a particular lesson. The teachers will
have the chance in emphasizing the discussion and dig into it for a longer retention.

The Strength of the Curriculum

The strength of the curriculum is the feature on student-centered activities. According to
them, teachers are now the facilitators of learning. The focus now is on how the students discover
 the essentiality of the lesson by performing the various activities. These activities are designed to
be a student-centered and do away the “spoon feeding” method of teaching the students.

Conclusion
The study showed that there was decongestion of the topics for all areas of science
especially the Biology. It shows that decongestion has to do with the retention and possible
increase of knowledge to students. The teachers identified the main role of the module, activities,
and time for the success of the implementation of the new curriculum. Module and activities are
demanding and time problem floated as a result of the delay of the matrix of schedule to finish the
lesson. Also, it was pointed out that the previous lessons are very essential in order to build up the
knowledge needed to the next lesson. Further, it was emphasized the strengthening of the basic
concepts from lower years so that the students and teachers will have their smooth mainstreaming
to the next lesson.

References
Aranas-Romulo, J. (2015). Issues on the Implementation of the K+12 Curriculum. Cugman,
Cagayan de Oro City.
Capangpangan, D. (2015). Issues on the Implementation of the K+12 Curriculum. Iligan City
National High School, Mahayahay, Iligan City.
Maribong, H. (2015). Issues on the Implementation of the K+12 Curriculum. Tibanga, Iligan
City.
Moyon, A. (2015). Issues on the Implementation of the K+12 Curriculum. Cagayan de Oro City.
Ocampo, M. (2015). Issues on the Implementation of the K+12 Curriculum. Tambacan, Iligan
City.
Quiap, N. (2015). Issues on the Implementation of the K+12 Curriculum. Clarin, Ozamis City.

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