DepEd to phase in 12 years of basic education

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 Aquino’s 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 don’t 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. “It’s too late to have an intervention after grade six,” she said.

DepEd’s 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. It’s 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

ON 12-YEAR BASIC EDUCATION:Fix major education problems first–Nebres

By Phillip Tubeza, Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines—Ateneo de Manila University president Fr. Bienvenido Nebres has criticized the Aquino administration’s plan to add two more years to basic education, saying the government should focus first on cutting the number of “illiterates” the country produces annually.

Nebres, who headed the Presidential Task Force on Education (PTFE) in the Arroyo administration, said that with its meager resources, the government should first address the backlog in schools, textbooks, teachers and classrooms, and then cut by half the number of students (estimated to be around 700,000) who drop out of elementary school and are “illiterate.”

“Once you have achieved that, then let’s talk about the two years,” Nebres said in an interview in his office at the Ateneo.

President Aquino in his State of the Nation Address announced the plan to add two more years to basic education, which currently consists of six years of elementary and four years of high school.

The plan is aimed at aligning the Philippine education system with international standards.

But for Nebres, the plan would take away precious government resources from more pressing needs. Proponents of the plan say it would cost the government an additional P100 billion to implement it over a five-year period.

Nebres said records showed that 700,000 to 800,000 elementary school students—or around a third of the 2.4 million who enter the grades each school year—drop out before Grade 6.

“That means they’re illiterate. They’re unemployable. The estimate is that there are 12 million to 15 million illiterates in the country. So every year, you’re adding another 700,000 to 800,000,” Nebres said.

“That’s what should be addressed first because the country cannot move with so many poor unemployable people being added every year,” he said.

Instead of adding two years to basic education, Nebres recommended that the government instead add extra years to “select college courses” whose graduates would be required abroad to have 15 to 16 years of education.

Progressive Partylist Files Bill Upgrading Teachers’ Salary

SOURCE: Bulatlat.com

ACT Teachers Party-List on Wednesday filed House Bill 2142, “The Public School Teachers’ Salary Upgrading Act,” mandating an increase in salary grade level of public school teachers from Salary Grade 11 to Salary Grade 15.

Before filing the bill, ACT Teachers Party-List Representative Antonio Tinio joined members of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers in a short program held outside the main gate of the Batasang Pambansa Complex in Quezon City.

The bill will raise the minimum pay to P24,887 from P15,649 per month, ensuring a decent standard of living for teachers and their families. Those covered by the bill are public school teachers in elementary and secondary schools, vocational and technical schools and state universities and colleges, whether nationally or locally funded.

According to Rep. Tinio, the family living wage in the National Capital Region, estimated at P957 per day or more than P21,054 per month, is in sharp contrast with the P15,649 monthly salary of a Teacher I. “In order to cope with this ‘living salary gap,’ teachers resort to borrowing and are heavily indebted to government financial institutions such as the GSIS, private lending institutions, or loan sharks,” he said.

Rep. Tinio noted that uniformed personnel and call center employees receive higher salaries than teachers. “A duly licensed professional teacher occupying the entry-level position of Teacher I, with a monthly salary of P15,649, earns substantially less than a high school graduate who enters the Philippine Military Academy as a cadet, with a monthly salary of P21,709 per month,” he said.

“The salary for call center employment, which requires neither formal education nor bachelor’s degree, ranges from P12,500 to P20,000 a month. It’s no wonder we’re seeing some of our best teachers leaving the country to work abroad, whether as teacher or even as domestic helpers, nannies, or caregivers,” Tinio added.

Rep. Tinio expressed confidence that the bill will get widespread support among teachers. “This is important because mass mobilization of teachers at the grassroots level is key to gaining majority support in Congress for the passage of this bill into law. We will meet with teachers all over the country to ensure that they take part in this campaign.”