K-12 will only worsen school woes

ON DISTANT SHORE
By Val G. Abelgas

There is nothing wrong with dreaming. But at least one must dream realistically.

Take the case of those education officials who insisted on implementing a K-12 program that added two extra years to the country’s 10-year basic education despite the strong objections of teachers, students, parents and progressive groups and despite the obvious lack of logistics to support such an ambitious plan. As it turns out, the dream is turning into a nightmare.

Since 2004, officials of the Department of Education have been trying to add one or two years to the 10-year basic education. Last year, the Aquino administration started the implementation of the program, which follows the K-6-4-2 Model where basic education equates to Kindergarten plus six years in elementary (Grades 1 to 6), four years in junior high school (Grades 7 to 10) and introduction of two years in senior high school (Grades 11 and 12).

During the opening of classes on Monday, it became obvious that the country is not ready for the K-12 program, which can only mean additional classrooms, teachers, chairs, desks, books and other educational materials for the added students in those two extra years.

It was again common to see 50 or so students jammed inside a small classroom, sharing desks and chairs and textbooks while a solitary teacher tried to reach out to every single one of them through blackboards that have seen better days. Worse, some classes had to be held in unfinished classrooms without walls and half-finished roof, or under some shady trees that would serve no purpose under even a slight rain.

Again, public school teachers called on the DepEd and the government to prioritize addressing the shortages in the basic education first before “taking about the more expensive K to 12 program.”

“The perennial problem of our school system again resurfaced on the first day of school year, particularly the lack of necessary resources such as teachers, books, and learning materials, chairs and classrooms as well as toilets among others,” said National Chairman Benjo Basas of the Teachers Dignity Coalition (TDC). “It only shows that the government’s fund for education sector is not even enough to operate the existing program, yet we are talking about the more expensive K-to-12.”

To solve the problem, DepEd resorted to triple-shifting, which created more classes and, therefore, worsened the teacher shortage problem, and home schooling, which we all know will never succeed in poverty-stricken households.

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) estimates that shortages in public schools for this school year include 250,000 chairs; 32,644 classrooms; 46, 576 teachers; 60 million textbooks and 80,937 water and sanitation facilities.

DepEd officials are refuting this claim and are insisting that there are no such shortages. And that’s where the problem lies. Before one can address a problem, one has to admit there is a problem. Continued denial would only worsen the situation.

The teachers should know whereof they speak because they are in the forefront of the situation. They are the ones who must confront head-on the problem of overcrowded classrooms and lack of textbooks and learning materials, while the education officials are comfortably perched in their air-conditioned rooms.

The Aquino administration has claimed that it is committed to improving the country’s educational system to be at par with international standards, and has, in fact, made such a goal an integral part of its 10-point agenda. And yet, it has kept the budget for education well below the international benchmark of 6.0 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). The administration has also given priority to paying foreign debts over improving education.

Freedom from Debt Coalition president Ricardo Reyes said that in 2012, only P224.9 billion was set aside for education, only a third of the budget debt servicing amounting to P739 billion. The budget for education was only 15.03 percent of the national budget and only 2.2 percent of the gross domestic product.

Reyes said spending on education has dropped since it peaked in 1955 at 30.78 percent of the budget, shrinking to 15 percent in several post-Edsa Revolution administrations. The budget for 2013 at 14.97 percent was even lower than the post-Edsa average of 15 percent, Reyes said.

Data from Unesco and the World Bank show that the Philippines has the lowest education spending in proportion to the total budget (except Singapore), as percent of gross domestic product, and per student. He said the country’s spending level is below the East Asian regional average of 3.6 percent of GDP and South Asia’s average of 3.8 percent.

A DepEd consultant said the immediate goal in all the current education initiatives is simply to provide the youth with the wherewithal to get past high school so they could get decent jobs.

“A lot of our high school graduates—70 percent—do not go to college,” Pañares said. Under the new K to 12 program, they would at least be assured of a vocational certificate that would enable them to land jobs, she said. “Now they have a chance. They will not be a burden.”

That may be true in the United States, from which the DepEd officials have patterned their K-12 program and where jobs for non-college graduates are abundant, but not in the Philippines where a majority of college graduates cannot even find jobs.

Last year, members of the Manila Public School Teachers Association (MPSTA) said the K-12 was “a wrong solution to a wrong problem.”

“We are calling on DepEd and PNoy to stop the K to 12 program because it is not a solution but an additional burden. The program has no fund appropriated for it. We lack preparation in retooling and training for teachers, and we don’t have textbooks and teaching modules,” MPSA President Benjie Valbuena said.

Even if education officials were right that adding two more years to basic education would eventually enable the Philippine to catch up with other countries in educational standards, implementation of the K-12 program should be suspended until the government has drastically reduced the acute shortages in classrooms, teachers, textbooks and other learning materials and until it has improved the quality of the country’s teaching standards.

To continue the implementation of the program despite the obvious problems would only confound the situation and turn the dream of bringing the Philippine education system up to par with other countries into its worst nightmare.

(valabelgas@aol.com)