PENA, Clyde Ian Brett C.

ZEN 115 2MB March 16, 2015

K+12 Program in the Philippines

The Aquino administration proposed a two-year extension to the 10-year basic education

cycle to lift the quality of education. The new curriculum will allow specialization in science and

technology, music and arts, agriculture and fisheries, sports, business, and entrepreneurship, and

others. Students will be expected to be fully armed to enter the work world even without a

college degree. These all sound very nice, but if we get down to the bottom line, it doesnt sound

that appealing.

The K+12 (Kindergarten plus 12) program will be a great burden on the part of the

parents since they will be the ones to shell out more money for the education of their children.

The government does not have the money to subsidize for two more years of free education,

since it does not even have the money to fully support todays ten years. The Department of

Education must first solve the problems regarding lack of classrooms, furniture and equipment,

qualified teachers, and error-free textbooks. We can do in ten years what everyone else in the

world takes 12 years to do so why do we have to follow what the rest of the world is doing? We

can level with them with our previous situation. Filipinos right now are accepted in prestigious

graduate schools around the world, even with only ten years of basic education.

As far as the curriculum is concerned, the Department of Education should fix the current

subjects instead of adding new ones. The problem is the content, not the length, of basic

education. A high school diploma will not get anybody too far in the entry level because business

firms will not hire fresh high school graduates and will opt to choose professional, university
graduates. While students are stuck in Grades 11 and 12, colleges and universities will have no

freshmen for two years. This will spell financial disaster for many private colleges and

universities.

Therefore, instead of adding years, the government must focus on measures aimed at

increasing state spending on education, stopping unjust tuition and other fee increases in all

levels, promoting a nationalist curriculum, upholding democratic rights of students, improving

teachers welfare, and improve science, research and technology development.