Honeyman: Education policy: a Supreme Court challenge

SUPREME Court (SC) justices reconvene on Monday for the summer sessions to be held in Baguio City. High on SC’s agenda is to consider various petitions assailing the constitutionality and legality of the Department of Education’s (DepEd) K-12 program.

Several of these petitions were submitted over two years ago. In fact, in March 2014 SC requested various officials including Education Secretary Armin Luistro, Commission of Higher Education head Patricia Licuanan, and Secretary of Labor and Employment Rosalinda Baldoz to reply, within 10 days, to various queries relating to the implementation of K-12.

SC may believe that, as long as it gives its verdict by June, when students return to school, it will have acted as expeditiously as necessary. In fact, this is not the case. As early as July 2015, qualified students were not able to take College entrance examinations which, in previous years was part of the fourth year high school activity.

Thanks to DepEd’s high-handedness, this June will be a mess.

How?

1. Many academically-oriented completers of four years high school are prevented from entering college, even though they would benefit from college courses. Their school teachers know this and have said so. In many cases, these students are better qualified for tertiary education than those who through sophist loopholes are deemed by DepEd to be suitable for college education. These loopholes, related to the appearance, though not the reality, of K-12 adherence, have allowed some students from, unsurprisingly, La Salle, and STI West Negros to enter college this year even though they have only completed four years of high school.

2. Money is a problem. Public schools generally are not offering the academic track in fifth and sixth year high school. Their focus is on the technical-vocational track which will essentially exclude those students from professional careers.

Public school students who wish to take the academic track will usually need to transfer to private schools. Most will not be able to afford the fees even with the support of vouchers which will only amount to a maximum of P16,000 per annum. For most private schools, students will have to find an additional P30,000 approximately to make up the shortfall.

Nobody knows under what circumstances, though impoverishment will be an advantage, students will be able to obtain the vouchers.

*****

SC petitioners include the Council for Teachers and Staff of Colleges and University of the Philippines, the Manila Science High School, Association of Concerned Teachers party-list, and Senator Antonio Trillanes IV as well as some individuals.

SC’s work is made more difficult due to DepEd’s liberal use of paralogisms – the use of fallacious reasoning. This is particularly relevant in its confident but erroneous views about the relationship between the length of courses, no matter how mediocre, and the employability of graduates from these courses.

I hope SC is not fooled. Employers are not.

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