Global employment for Filipinos through K+12 program

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

WHILE the world continues to progress and move towards advancement, where is the Philippines found as the race continues and the adversities triple in time? Will we still be able to cope up? How far behind and drained are we already that moving forward is so painful to bare? In an attempt to jump a few meters, the Philippine government pursues a sudden enhancement in its programs.

Hearing about the Department of Education’s enhanced curriculum under the K+12 program, I am convinced that the country needs it. But I can’t help but ask a lot of questions in mind.

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K+12 Basic Education program aims to improve aggressively the education status of the country by trying to make Kindergarten a must, sticking to its 6-year elementary education, and adding 2 years in the current 4-year secondary education (4 years junior or regular high school, 2 years senior high school). With this enhancement in the curriculum, graduates are expected to be more mature, competent and adequately prepared for employment (since after high school, the student is 18 years old) or higher education.

Furthermore, the additional 2 years in high school seeks to reinforce the academic skills and technical skills of students and further develop their particular strengths so that they are more confident and competent to face either the challenge of added learning by pursuing college or the reality of early employment. While it is true that globally the 12-year program has been successful, is K+12 rather ambitious for the Philippines considering our situation?

Department of Education is the top department to receive the highest budget allocation and the 2011 budget for basic education is P207.27 billion. Considering that this budget is allocated salaries of teachers, textbooks, building of classrooms and school furniture, according to studies there will be around 82.4 million deficits from the 207.72-billion budget. Therefore, we will not be expecting for more teachers nor decent classrooms with new chairs; students will deal with the same old books. Even after an increase of 32 billion from 2010’s budget, education is still massively compromised.

When you have the privilege to deal with students and personally be a parent to students, you realize that it’s not because they get bored or they lack determination that around 57% end up failing to complete their schooling. Even with free tuition fees in public schools, there are a lot of circumstances when they would need money, And what now if there’s none?

K+12 is definitely a good program, considering how it aims to empower and prepare students in their future undertakings. But its not merely about grabbing the chance for betterment that we choose sudden change. There are more to consider than just the fact that we’re far behind from the rest. The sourcing of funds, distribution of resources and implementation of the program. (S.D.Oayet)