Is the k12 good for the Philippine education system Yes 92.31 no 7.61 1.

Introduction There is a strong perception that the Philippines is lagging behind its other neighboring Asian countries due to its 10-year basic education system. In particular, several educators argue that the current K-10 education system in the Philippines is one of the reasons why the level of learning among Filipino students is lower compared to students in other countries. Results of the Third International Mathematics and Science Test (TIMSS) for 13-year old children in different countries showed that out of the 41 participating countries, the Philippines ranked second and third from the bottom. Furthermore, recent reports showed that among 155 UNESCO member countries, only DjiBouti, Angola, and the Philippines still fall below the accepted international norm i.e. adopting a K-12 education system.

The enhanced K-12 program, or theDepartment of Education s (DepEd) proposal to overhaul the basic and secondary education curriculum by adding two more years to the system is arguably one of the most drastic and controversial programs of the Aquino administration. The program is proposed to start in school year 2012-2013 for Grade 1 and first year high school students with the target of full implementation by SY 2018-2019. K-12 has been met with criticism from youth and student groups , teachers, parents and the academic community. The DepEd, for its part, appears determined to enact the program with its proposed budget catering mostly to preparing the grounds for its eventual implementation. The DepEd argues that the K-12 program will be the solution to yearly basic education woes and the deteriorating quality of education. Critics, however, counteract that the education crisis needs to be addressed more fundamentally and adding more school years would only exacerbate the situation.

Dissecting K-12 The K-12 model is an educational system for basic and secondary education patterned after the United States ,Canada , and some parts of Australia . The current basic education system is also an archetype of American schooling but with a 10-year cycle. DepEd reasons that it is high time to adopt a K-12 system, attributing the low achievement scores and poor quality of basic education to the present school setup. Following wide protests over the proposal, the departmentreleased its official position defending K-12. Below are the main arguments and corresponding counter-arguments from critics.

1. The K-12 will solve the annual growing number of out-of-school youth. Students and parents, however complain that it would be an added burden to poor families. While public education is free, a political youth group estimates that a student would still need an average of P20,000 per school year to cover transportation, food, school supplies and other schooling expenses. Also, based on the latest Family Income and Expenditure Survey , families prioritize spending for food and other basic needs over their childrens school needs. Two more years for basic education would inevitably translate to higher dropout rate. 2. The K-12 will address low achievement scores and poor academic performance of elementary and high school students. DepEd says that the poor quality of basic education is reflected in the low achievement scores of students. Results of the TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study), however, negate the connection of the number of years to the performance of students.

According to results of the TIMSS, the length of schooling does not necessarily mean better scores. In fact, some countries with the same or shorter school cycle garnered the highest scores while those implementing the K-12 model or more years of schooling got lower scores. According to a study released by former Deputy Education Minister Abraham I. Felipe and Fund for Assistance to Private Education (FAPE) Executive Director Carolina C. Porio , the DepEds arguments are impressionistic and erroneous because there is no clear correlation between the length of schooling and students performance. The said study shows that fourth graders from Australia had respectable TIMSS scores despite having only one year of pre-schooling, while Morocco (two years of pre-school), Norway (three years) and Armenia and Slovenia (both four years) had lower scores than Australia. South Korea , which has the same length of basic education cycle as the Philippines, was among the top performers in the TIMSS, while those with longer pre-schooling (Ghana , Morocco, Botswana and Saudi Arabia , three years) had lower test scores. Test scores of Filipino students, meanwhile, were lower than those garnered by all 13 countries with shorter elementary cycles, namely, Russia , Armenia, Latvia , Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Hungary, Bulgaria , Serbia,Romania , Moldova , Italy , Egypt and Iran. In the high school level, Singapore that also has a four-year high school cycle, got the highest score. Ironically, the Philippines got a lower score together with countries that have longer high school cycles like South Africa, Chile, Palestine, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. For the pre-college level, the Philippines also got a low score, but so did the United States , which has a 15-year basic and secondary education cycle. Students from Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong , all with shorter education cycles, got higher scores than America students.

3. The DepEd has enough resources to implement the K-12. Interestingly, countries whose students got high scores in the TIMSS were the ones whose governments allotted high public spending for education. Despite nominal increases in the total education budget, the government has been spending less per capita on education. The real spending per capita per day dropped to P6.85 in 2009. From 2001 to 2009, educations portion in the national budget has steadily decreased. This pales in comparison to neighboring countries - Malaysia , 7.4 percent and Thailand , 4 percent. It is also lower than the four percent average for all countries that were included in the World Education Indicators in 2006 . The country is also lagging behind its Asian counterparts in public expenditure on education as a percentage of total public spending. In a statement , President Benigno Aquino III said that his administration is prioritizing education and, as proof, the DepEd budget will increase by P32 billion in 2011. However, according to Anakbayan spokesperson Charisse Banez, Even if you combine the DepEd and SUCs (state college and universities) budgets, it will only equal to three percent of the GDP, a far cry from the six percent GDFPamount advocated by the United Nations. The UN Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO ) recommend that governments spend at least six percent of their GDP for education. Former Education secretary Mona Valisno stated in a separated study that DepEd needs at least P100 billion to fully address the shortage of 93,599 classrooms and 134,400 seats and P63 million for textbooks and scholarships. Proponents of the program allude to the experience of St. Marys Sagada a school implementing K-12 that has been topping the National Achievement Test in Mountain Province. However, aside from the K-12, the school also has a 1:20

teacher to student ratio and is not suffering any sort of shortage in faculty or facilities. Critics of the K-12 assert that while government resources have been found wanting and insufficient for the present 10-year cycle, how will it be able to afford to fund a K-12 model?

4. The K-12 will open doors for more jobs for the youth, even without a college diploma. DepEd says that a K-12 program will improve the chances for youth employment as it is aimed to improve technical-vocational skills through focusing on arts, aquaculture and agriculture, among others. The K-12, it further states, will ensure that students graduating at the age of 18 will have jobs, thus making them employable even without a college degree. However, critics are quick to note that the Philippines, that has a predominantly young population, also has the highest overallunemployment rate in East Asia and the Pacific Region. According to World Bank study, the country also has the highest youth unemployment rate. Young Filipino workers are twice as likely to be unemployed than those in older age groups as they figure in the annual average of at least 300,000 new graduates that add up to the labor force. The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE ) reported in 2008 that 50 percent of the unemployed 2.7 million nationwide were aged 15 to 24. Of these, 461,000 or 35 percent had college degrees while about 700,000 unemployed youth either finished high school or at least reached undergraduate levels. Therefore, the persistent high unemployment rates, may not be necessarily linked with the present 10-year cycle but instead with the countrys existing economic system and the governments job generation policies.

5. Filipino graduates will be automatically recognized as professionals abroad. In the present 10-year cycle, the DepEd argues, the quality of education is reflected in the inadequate preparation of high school graduates for the world of work or entrepreneurship or higher education. What the K-12 program aims to achieve, therefore, is to reinforce cheap semiskilled labor for the global market. With young workers, mostly semi-skilled and unskilled workers now making up an estimated 10.7 percent of the total Filipino labor migrant population, it comes as no surprise then that the government is now programming its youth to servicing needs of the global market. Labor migration, however, has resulted in the brain drain of Filipino skilled workers and professionals. Ironically, while the DepEd and the government mouths a so-called professionalization of the young labor force in foreign markets, their significance to domestic development and nation-building is sadly being undervalued at the expense of providing cheap labor under the guise of providing employment. While proponents and advocates hail the K-12 model as the saving grace of youth unemployment, critics argue that it will only aggravate the countrys dependence on labor export and the inflow of remittances that do not necessarily contribute to substantive and sustainable nation-building.

A Filipino education Lastly, the DepEd justifies the K-12 model by saying that the present short basic education program affects the human development of Filipino students. Ultimately, regardless of whichever model, what the youth and country direly needs is for the development and establishment of an education system that caters to the needs of the Filipino youth and the society in general. The crisis of the Philippine education system, in all levels, is stemmed not on the superficial, in this case the number of schooling years, but rather on the conditions and foundation on which it subsists. Unless the government

addresses in earnest poor public spending, high costs of schooling, the predominance of a colonial curriculum, lack of transparency and accountability amid widespread corruption within the sector and the development of the countrys science and technology for domestic development, all efforts will remain on the surface. And neither 10 nor 12 years would make much of difference. High school graduates can be productively employed even without a college degree once two years are added to basic education, Education Secretary Armin Luistro said today. The education chief recently announced his plan to implement President Noynoy Aquinos agenda of increasing the basic education cycle from the current 10 years to 12 years, a plan that he referred to as the enhanced K+12 basic education program. He explained that K refers to Kindergarten while the number 12 refers to the sum of seven years of grade school and five years of high school. He said that these reforms will be implemented gradually over a number of years and may go beyond the term of the current or even next administration. Luistro said that the Department of Education (DepEd) is currently working on a concept paper that will outline the proposed revisions to the public school curriculum and how these will be implemented and funded. He added that DepEd will present the proposal to the public on October 5, 2010, which is World Teachers Day, so that all education stakeholders can give their feedback. Luistro said that these reforms will aim to ensure that future high school graduates are ready to be productively employed even without completing college. The current thinking and the current culture in the Philippines is that if you dont finish with a college degree, there is something missing in your life. What

should basic education be? To me, what is basic is that [high school graduates] should be able to live a meaningful life, they should be able to be prepared to start a family, and thirdly they should be able to be productively employed, explained Luistro. He added that the DepEd will explore how public schools can better develop Filipino students skills and talents in the arts, sports, agriculture, fisheries, and in technical or vocational fields, among others. Perhaps our current curriculum is too academic in orientation, said Luistro. What are the needs of industry? You need to match that with the gifts, resources, and interests of young people. Re-examine reform priorities But some educators believe that DepEd should re-examine its reform priorities. Our immediate focus should be just improving basic education. The dropout rate is very, very high and the quality of education is very, very low, says Milwida Guevara, chief executive officer of Synergeia, an NGO that focuses on improving the quality of public school education through greater local government support. Guevara said that DepEd should focus instead on improving the quality of education in kindergarten, pre-school, and in grades one to four of elementary school. She added that adding two years to the education cycle will address the problem of the lack of quality of students in the high school, and also in the university, but it does not address the problem in earlier years of schooling. She said that as many as 30 percent of students who enter grade one drop out before grade six, and that these figures are higher in some areas of Mindanao. Its too late to have an intervention after grade six, she said. DepEds proposal also drew mixed reactions from visitors to the GMANews.TV Facebook Fan Page.

Add two more years for high school? Para sa apat na years na high school nga lang, kulang na ang budget ng mga magulang. Dadagdagan mo pa ng dalawa? And besides, from the start,hindi naman yung years ang problema, kundi ung kakulangan ng libro and materials para sa mga students, pati na rin ung kakulangan sa teachers, said Facebook user Kevin Taboada. (Parents can hardly afford to pay for four years of high school, and yet they want to add two more years? Besides, the number of years is not the problem. Its the lack of books and educational materials for students, and the lack of teachers.) Other Facebook users believed the proposal would help make Filipino graduates more globally competitive. Dubai-based OFW Hannah Zipporah Tayo said, Natapos ko ang 10 years high school standard sa Pinas, and I had to pursue further studies in Dubai. None of the universities and colleges accepted me, kasi di nila recognize ang 10 years standard. Siguro nga kailangan ng upgrade ang curriculum! (I finished ten years of high school in the Philippines, and I had to pursue further studies in Dubai. None of the universities and colleges accepted me because they did not recognize my ten years of education. I think the curriculum should be upgraded!) Dennis Montas Lorejo, a Filipino who teaches in the United States, wrote, To conform with the global standard, we must move to a 12-year basic education. Also, strengthen the teachers knowledge and skills so that they may bring better instructions to their students. Upgrade the school facilities, impose the use of technology in schools, raise teachers salary, and a lot more. But we must start with something, right? April Joy Cruz said, Quality is better than quantity. Tingin ko, kahit dagdagan ng two years, pero ang situation ng mga public school students na 60 to 80

students per class, walang upuan at libro, para lang nagsasayang ng oras sa eskwelahan kung wala rin naman matututunan. (We can add two years, but for as long as classrooms still have to be shared by 60 to 80 students, and for as long as these students have no books or chairs to use, our students will be wasting their time learning nothing.) - HS, GMANews.TV