WHEN the school year opens, what truly happens is that people find out how education in this country has become most expensive. Parents usually feel like they are being hit by a heavy wallop.
In most instances, they are forced to scrimp for the much needed cash to foot the bill that would allow their children to eventually get their needed grades. Right now, it looks as if most young kids of school age are spread out across the years in their assigned grades.
Actually, the best time to educate our young is really in this period, but the problem is that this has also become the time when our country decided to add two more years to basic education. I am referring to the two years in senior high school.
Well it is just that in the last three or four years the officials of our country, which belongs to a family of states known as the Association of Southeast Asean Nations (Asean), realized that we are behind in education and so has come up with efforts to catch up.
As a consequence, the administration of President Noynoy Aquino conceived the K to 12 program wherein kindergarten is now required before one could enter grade one and two more years were added to the curriculum. This is meant to ensure that we would be on equal footing with other Asean member-countries.
Among the Asean member-countries are Malaysiaa, Indonesia, Australia, Brunei, as well as Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar, which is also called Burma, along with Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Unfortunately, it looks like the Department Education (DepEd) is not prepared to implement the K to 12 program, which will be done in 2016. Thus there are some politicians and groups that are petitioning the Supreme Court to postpone the implementation of the program.
Because two more years will be added to the curriculum, additional classrooms are needed. But not all schools have been given money to spend for the construction of the new classrooms. There is now the worry that classrooms would not be enough once the K to 12 program will finally be implemented.
Even under the present curriculum wherein only 10 years are needed before a student could go to college, the facilities of many public schools are inadequate.
There is a lack of school books and just recently some people are questioning the contents of these books because some of them contain wrong information.
And what about the expenses of the parents?
Considering this situation, it is correct for people to go to the Supreme Court and call for the postponement of the implementation of the program. The best thing is for the DepEd to be really prepared. Let us therefore wait for the decision of the High Court. Will it listen to the arguments of the protesters? Let us wait and see.