The Philippine education system placed 113th out of 127 countries in the education category of the 2017 Global Innovation Index. If this dismal ranking is anywhere accurate then it is clear that the Department of Education (DepEd) needs to take care of a lot of basic needs before the K to 12 curriculum that it has been implementing for the past few years could be deemed successful.
There’s clearly a need for our education system to catch up with other countries, for Filipino graduates to be just as competitive, just as productive and employable as their foreign counterparts. But two more years of the same poor system won’t cut it.
If classrooms are still overcrowded, with teachers having to do shifts just to accommodate the huge number of students, if the government’s budget allocation for education still has not solved the perennial basic problems like the lack of classrooms, teachers, textbooks and other basic needs, then an additional two more years of schooling in that same poor system is the last thing our students (and their harried parents who pay their tuitions) need.
Sen. Sherwin T. Gatchalian filed Senate Resolution 675, paving the way for an inquiry in aid of crafting remedial legislation as chairman of a subcommittee tasked to “look into the current state of the Philippine education system and assess the efficacy and effectiveness” of existing education laws and policies.
The senator’s resolution noted that, despite earlier legislative reforms introduced by the government to expand access and improve the quality of the Philippine education system, “the country still ranked a dismal 113th out of 127 countries in the education category.”
Moreover, Gatchalian grumbled over the poor marks received by the Philippine education system on the Global Competitiveness Index 2017-2018 recently released by the World Economic Forum, where the Philippines ranked 66th out of 137 countries for primary education quality, 74th for secondary education quality, and 76th for quality of math and science education.
Even the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI), early this year, said that the first batch of K to 12 graduates last March was not ready for employment.
One of the main objectives of K to 12 and one of the DepEd’s main arguments in pushing for its implementation was that it was going to help high school graduates who can’t afford to go to college get a job. Indeed, the DepEd even started implementing the extended basic education system even if the law authorizing it was still pending before Congress at the time, and even with a Supreme Court petition asking to abolish it yet unresolved (to this day, in fact).
But the PCCI said the majority of K to 12 graduates have not gotten sufficient training for employment in the real world, and that K to 12 still needs a lot of help and improvement.
Another constant concern is that there are still a lot of public schools that are not equipped to even teach K to 12 or even just the additional two years of senior high school, hence the DepEd has had to issue vouchers to public school students so they can enroll in private schools that are offering the senior high-school program.
By this time the government should have already wiped out previous backlogs in classroom shortages, textbooks and teachers, as well as provided the facilities needed to fully implement K to 12.
Free basic education is a constitutional mandate. President Duterte even extended free education in state colleges and universities by signing into law the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act.
But this free education must be available to those who need it most, and this free education must also be of better if not the best quality. The K to 12 curriculum was supposed to make our graduates more competitive with the rest of the world by fixing our school system to match theirs, but again that’s granting that those two additional years would be quality years added to a vastly improved system.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano