Tuesday, December 27, 2011

DepEd Strengthens Awareness for K to 12 Basic Education Program

 Prologue:
 For some reason I have been having issues with my other blog site.  I have practically wasted precious time fixing it, so do kindly excuse for breaking up with my food blogging for this post.   Though I don't have food pictures, I'm sure everyone would find this post particularly straightforward information that matters most to our school children and the Philippine nation for that matter.   Do kindly excuse me for being serious in this matter for I do intend and find it pretty serious for my kids' future are at stake here.  

The Issue:
 DepEd stated their  challenges in handling Philippine education as follows:
  • Poor quality of education
  • Poor internal efficiency
  • Weak system of governance
  • Shortages in educational Inputs
  • Concern over Quality of teachers
Having said all these, Br. Armin Luistro, Secretary of  Department of Education and his constituents posed
some programs to transform basic education.   According to world Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report we ranked 5th in quality Education and last in quality of Science and Math Education and capacity for innovation, in ASEAN.   Being the last country in Asia and one of only three countries in the world with a 10-year pre-university program.
This is the challenge, to produce holistically developed learners who have 21st century skills and are prepared for higher education, middle skills development, employment and entrepreneurship.

The Implementation:
 SY 2011-2012 is said to be the start, where Universal Kindergarten have already been implemented and made possible awareness drive throughout the whole country encouraging parents to have their 5 year-olds registered to schools for Kindergarten.   And I did find it to be a strong drive as we can see an increase in population for pre-schoolers in preparation for elementary education.
The new curriculum fro Grade 1 and Grade 7 (High School Year 1) will be implemented in SY 2012-2013.
In conclusion, Grade 11 (HS Year 5) will be introduced in SY 2016-2017, Grade 12 (HS Year 6)  in SY 2017-2018.   By this it will not be quite a shock for all parents having to worry that their  6th graders will not graduate from elementary this year, and the same goes with the High schools.   The transformation is gradual and thus expecting the first batch of students to go through the whole new system of K to 12 will graduate in 2018.    Well, my five-year old daughter Danica will be one of those.

As for those who will be going to colleges and universities at this time, they will not be affected yet however, there will be a 2-year transition period  (the SY 2016-2017  and SY 2017-2018) and DepEd is in the process of formulating a transition management plan which involves the active participation of officials of educational institutions and organizations of colleges and universities both in public and private for this two-year gap.


A Call for the society's acceptance in spite of the ongoing issues and the upcoming challenges that go with the adjustments:
A forum last  December 12  at the Heritage Hotel Manila in Pasay City, was held where media  persons came to know updates on this issue and personally address media organization's questions which will be relayed to the mass.

 A sumptuous lunch was prepared for all of us, but what I was really waiting was to hear first-hand how people view this.  Media outfits from both TV, print and blogs were represented.   Since the time I came to know about DepEd's program, my husband and I have been debating.  Honestly, at first I was disfavored of it,  but with constant reminding from DepEd that this will all benefit our country and our students made me realize that it is time for our system to move up not just one notch but notches.
I do believe in the saying "it takes a whole village to raise a child," in the content, our nation has to stand against lack of resources, funding and such just to accept ambiguous changes in our society, changes that drives our nation to global competitiveness and eventually show the world that we will not confound any longer to the tag we have had being in the third world rank and as always getting the blue-collar jobs.   Not only we, parents play a gamut of role giving the best for our children, but the teachers, school administrators, government officials have the same responsibility and if each one of us determined and play visionary, can we all accomplish the development we've been wanting our country to have.
Pictures below showed how fervent our media leaders in facing issues concerning the updates of the K to 12 system.   Cara David,  Winnie Monsod and Mike Enriquez were shown asking questions and giving out comments.






4 comments:

  1. One comment (this is off topic). Your layout now is very hard to read in a mobile device -- that includes the fonts ;-) Say hello to Dan, we've been colleagues in uBGA ;-)

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  2. thank you so much for this piece. with no press kit at all you were able to explain Kto12 so well:)

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  3. whre's your photo with Mike Enriquez? hahaha.

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  4. Hi Joy. Right now, there are talks about grades 11 and 12 being under the basic education schools or ched schools. Some ensuing issues we have right now are as follows: if basic education schools will handle grades 11 and 12, where will they house these students (ex. put up another building) and if so, what will happen to the 2 years lull in colleges and universities since they will not go to college yet. Also, if ched will put up grades 11 or 12 (senior high school), then their teachers will need to be let passers. Right now, we have also started with the spiral curriculum in Math and Science. Some concerns we have right now is if a Science teacher is a BSE major in Physics only, he/she is still compelled to teach gen sci, bio, and chem. A 12-year program is indeed advisable but the government will have to be very clear cut on how to run this program's course.

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