K-to-12 by San Juan

Rethinking Educational Policy: Some Notes on K to 12 in The Philippines
David Michael M. San Juan
Citizen, Republic of the Philippines

From its inception during the last years of the Macapagal-Arroyo regime to its current implementation under the second Aquino presidency, the Kindergarten to 12 Years of Basic Education (K to 12) Program has been criticized and opposed by a broad array of forces. The current administration rammed it down our throats, just the same conducting tokenistic consultations right there and then to make it appear that the scheme is not a top-down imposition, but never really engaging in genuinely democratic bottom-up dialogue prior to K to 12’s inception, adoption, and implementation. It is within this context that we are duty-bound to expose the irrationality of K to 12, despite the prevailing notion that K to 12 is a necessary educational reform.
We write this short critique with Old Tasio in Rizal’s “Noli Me Tangere” in mind. Opposing K to 12 at this point is indeed somehow parallel to Old Tasio writing hieroglyphics at a time when most indios then can’t even read nor write using the Romanized alphabet. Pressed for an explanation on why he’s writing what appears to be gibberish to most indios then, Tasio replied that he’s writing to help future generations realize that not everyone slept in the “long night” of their ancestors.
Is K to 12 Logical?
The zealous proponents of K to 12 admit that the program is meant to make Philippine educational standards at par with global standards. They claim that, prior to K to 12’s implementation in the Philippines, the country shared the notoriety of Angola and Djibouti, in maintaining a 10-year Basic Education Cycle (pre-university years/primary to secondary education). They’re quick to point out that Angola and Djibouti are very poor countries, but at the same time, conveniently forget to mention (or perhaps they’re sincerely ignorant of the fact) that, using their own pro-K to 12 argument, anyone can convincingly say that ALL POOR COUNTRIES, except Angola and Djibouti, ARE K TO 12-COMPLIANT, and hence it is possible that K to 12 is partly responsible for these countries’ perennial poverty. Hence, we ask, is K to 12 logical?
Prior to K to 12’s implementation in the Philippines, students were compelled to undergo kindergarten and a 10-year Basic Education Cycle, before they’re allowed to study at the tertiary level. Under K to 12, the government says it will fund a 2-year senior high school on top of the old 10-year Basic Education Cycle. Hence, students will have to undergo kindergarten and 12 years of pre-university education.
But there lies the problem: do we have the funds to efficiently implement K to 12 at this point? The government needs to hire approximately 20,000 teachers to provide services for around 5,575,946 senior high school students. This means the government will have to spend at least 4,320,000,000 pesos, just for the senior high school teachers’ salaries for a year (computed with 18,000 pesos as the entry level salary).
Historically, our country is unable to comply with the global standard with regard to public funding for education as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), pegged at 6%. Thus, regardless of the government’s promise to secure funding for K to 12, we can validly question their inability to fulfill such empty promise, as the following figures suggest.
FIGURE 1: Public Expenditure on Education as A Percentage of the GDP: The Philippines vs. Selected Countries (whose Human Development Index rankings are higher than the Philippines; with the exception of India). Source: UNDP Public Data Explorer Online.

FIGURE 2: Public Expenditure on Education as A
Percentage of the GDP: The Philippines vs. Selected Countries (whose Human Development Index rankings are lower than the Philippines). Source: UNDP Public Data Explorer Online.

The quality of public K to 12 education must be also scrutinized. The Philippine Department of Education’s current “ideal” teacher-pupil ratios make us think that public K to 12 education will be very problematic. The public education system under K to 12 will be further stretched out, reaching unsustainable and unmanageable levels.
FIGURE 3: Teacher-Student Ratios in the Philippines, China, USA, Cuba and Sweden. Source: http://www.gov.ph/2014/03/05/p9-5b-to-fund-hiring-of-31335-teachers/ and World Bank Database Online.
LEVEL
RATIO
Kindergarten
1: 25-35
Multigrade Elem.
1: less than 30
Monograde Elem. (Grades 1-2)
1:40-50
Monograde Elem. (Grades 3-8)
1:45-55
Secondary
1:45-55
CHINA (elem.)
1:17-18
USA (elem.)
1:14
CUBA and SWEDEN (elem.)
1:9
Sa katunayan, ang mga pampublikong paaralan sa Pilipinas ay puno na ng mga mag-aaral. Ang gobyerno ang nagbabayad para sa higit kumulang 850,000 hanggang 900,000 na estudyante mula sa pribadong paaralan. At siya ring inaasahan para sa pagpapaaral ng mga 750,000 hanggang 800,000 na estudyante mula sa pribadong paaralan para sa antas 11 at 12 sa darating na 2016!
Maiibsan ba ng programang K-12 ang kahirapan?
Ayon sa mga tagapagtaguyod ng K-12, ang iksemang ito anng magiging daan para masolusyonan ang kahirapan sa Pilipinas. Sinasabi nila na ang dalawang taong pag-aaral sa mataas na paaralan ay sapat ng kwalipikasyon upang ang milyong mga kabataang Pilipino ay makahanap ng magandang trabaho kahit hindi na magkolehiyo. Pinatutunayan nila, na ang pagiging teknikal ng kurikulum sa mataas na paaralan sa pamamagitan ng “track-based Grade 12 course” ay maglilikha ng mga kabataan na mas handa at may sapat na kaalaman kaysa sa dating sistema ng edukasyon. Ang mga kabataang ito ay mas medaling makakakuha ng hanapbuhay dahil sa paghahanda sa kanila dulot ng sistemang K-12. Marami kaming agam-agam sa kanilang mga adhikain.
Una, ang pangkaraniwang kita o sweldo ng mga nakayapos ng kolehiyo ay may mataas kung ihahambing sa mga hindi nakapagtapos. Hindi natin ninanais na ang mga kabataan ay makulong sa mga trabahong maliit lamang ang kita. Lalo na kung ito’y “contractual” na sa ngayon ay mas pabor o kaaya-aya sa mga mega “pro-capital” at “anti-labor” na pamahalaan sa bawat panig ng mundo.
PIGURA 4: Pangkaraniwang Kita ng mga Empleyado ayon sa Pinakamataas na Kakayahang Pang-edukasyon. Source: “Investing in Inclusive Growth Amid Global Uncertainty,” a World Bank PHILIPPINE QUARTERLY UPDATE (July 2012).

Two, citizens from developed countries have higher college enrollment rates and higher average incomes than poor and developing countries. Hence, K to 12’s anti-tertiary education mantra is questionable and obviously bad for the country as the following figure proves.
FIGURE 5: Tertiary Level Enrollment and Per Capita GDP, 2008. Source: “Putting Higher Education to Work: Skills and Research for Growth in East Asia1,” a World Bank East Asia and Pacific Regional Report (2012).

Three, encouraging poor citizens to just finish senior high school and stop dreaming of achieving college education will further worsen the current educational apartheid observable in the Philippines and other countries where huge income gaps between the rich and the poor translate to huge gaps in the levels of educational attainment too. Are we not obliged to pull everyone up?

FIGURE 5: Education Attainment of Filipinos Grouped According to Socio-Economic Status. Source: Sakellariou, Chris. Access to and Equity of Higher Education in East Asia. Background paper prepared for World Bank 2011, World Bank, Washington, DC., 2010.

Four, it is very obvious that many senior high school graduates will be compelled by the nature of their education to seek employment overseas or in subsidiaries of foreign firms in the Philippines. Caregivers, housekeepers, clerks, welders, butchers, English-speaking agents etc. swiftly churned out every two years will be good news to exploitative firms abroad and their subsidiaries in the country. Hence, it is valid to consider K to 12 as complementary to the government’s social cost-ridden Labor Export Policy (LEP). The LEP was conceptualized during the Marcos dictatorship. More than twenty years hence, it is still a major government policy. It has brought billions of dollars of remittances to the Philippines, but at a very great cost. Brain and brawn drain, broken families, deskilling, and deindustrialization are some of the known effects of LEP on the Philippines. More than twenty years of LEP’s failure to wipe out Philippine poverty are enough. Any sane development program for the Philippines should rule out LEP as an option. Hence, reforming the country’s educational system via K to 12 to suit LEP is not a good policy. What country would pimp its citizens for wages lower than average wages in their host countries? Until a global agreement to fix migrants’ wages to the level of average wages in host countries is adopted, the LEP will never be a good option.
What’s Wrong With K to 12’s Senior High School and New College Curriculum Experiments?
K to 12’s proponents claim that they added two years of senior high school at the secondary level, so that college education will no longer be remedial in nature. They didn’t bother ask what’s behind the remedial nature of college education in the Philippines? Why do college teachers tend to repeat what students have supposedly learned in high school? The answer is very simple: high school education in the Philippines is failing as recent National Achievement Test (NAT) results suggest. The most recent data available says most students and most schools have garnered “average” achievement level. If Philippine high school education is good enough, most schools and most students should garner ratings that warrant the labels “moving towards mastery,” “closely approximating mastery” or finally reaching the level of “mastery.” Furthermore, over-all, the mean percentage score of high school students is yet to reach 50% in recent years. In other words, most students actually fail the NAT (most of them cannot even answer 50% of the items correctly). The following data speak for themselves.
FIGURE 6. Source: http://netrc.sysportal.net/Frame.aspx?id=2030

FIGURE 7. Source: http://netrc.sysportal.net/Frame.aspx?id=2028

FIGURE 8. Source: http://netrc.sysportal.net/Frame.aspx?id=2027

College teachers are compelled by the circumstances to do what they can to offer remedial lessons simply because high school education never worked for a number of students. Hence, imposing two years of senior high school – without providing ample funding – will further increase the burden on the backs of the already overburdened teachers at the secondary level. In the long run, the country’s senior high school education will be half-baked and ineffective, especially in public schools.
Saying that college curriculum needs to be decongested so that students will be able to focus on their fields of specialization, K to 12 proponents have craftily engineered the trimming down of the General Education Curriculum (GEC) in college and claim that, generally, subjects in college will be “transferred” to senior high school. The “grand transfer” is of course very problematic on many counts.
Reducing the subjects in the GEC will cause job losses or at least income losses for around 60,000 to 100,000 college instructors/lecturers/professors, not to mention tens of thousands of clerks, registrars, secretaries and other education sector employees. In view of the foregoing, it is should now be clear to the reader that these job and/or income losses are unnecessary and illogical. Why reduce the subjects in the college GEC only to add two years in the already overburdened secondary level sector?
Well of course, we know the devilish reason: the government and a number of for-profit educational institutions have teamed up to implement massive contractualization/adjunctivization of faculty members at the tertiary level. Indeed, some schools have publicly announced that, come 2018 (the year in which the first graduates of the government’s senior high school experiment are expected to enter college en masse), faculty members who were/will be fired in 2014 or earlier, will be (re)hired as contractuals.
K to 12 proponents claim that college teachers should just transfer to senior high school. It is another problematic solution. Teaching high school and teaching college students are entirely different things. Teachers will have to reapply and undergo the usual procedure. Some will be required to take up units in Education and/or pass the licensure examination. It is clear that most of college teachers who will be compelled to teach in senior high school will see their salaries and benefits decreased or trimmed. The government promises to help them survive the “transition years” through a 10-billion “stabilization fund” for teachers, but it is unable to explain where such fund will come from. Even if such fund is made available, isn’t more practical to stop tinkering with the current curriculum through expensive policy shifts, and instead use the fund to improve the current 10-year Basic Education cycle?
The devil is in the details, so there’s also a need to scrutinize the changes in the curricula. By now, we all know that the national language is abolished as a discipline in the new college curriculum2. However, few people know that there are no Philippine History classes in the newly-crafted senior high school level, and that there will be no study of the Philippine Constitution in the new college curriculum, a clear violation of Article XIV, Section 3 of the 1987 Constitution.
“Transferring” subjects from college to senior high school means diminishing general education in college in favor of a highly technicalized and track-based senior high school curriculum. We ought to be reminded, that, as Carol Geary Schneider3 (2009), president of Association of American Colleges and Universities says “...a liberal education also engages students with the wider world and deliberately cultivates both the capacities to make sense of complexity and the commitment to consider responsibilities to the larger community. It prepares graduates not just to ride out this economic storm, or the next one, but to chart a journey through them...a great education and narrow technical training are not one and the same.” Another article entitled “Who Killed the Liberal Arts? And why we should care” by Joseph Epstein4 (2012) notes that “The death of liberal arts education would constitute a serious subtraction. Without it, we shall no longer have a segment of the population that has a proper standard with which to judge true intellectual achievement. Without it, no one can have a genuine notion of what constitutes an educated man or woman, or why one work of art is superior to another, or what in life is serious and what is trivial. The loss of liberal arts education can only result in replacing authoritative judgment with rivaling expert opinions, the vaunting of the second- and third-rate in politics and art, the supremacy of the faddish and the fashionable in all of life. Without that glimpse of the best that liberal arts education conveys, a nation might wake up living in the worst, and never notice.” At this point, the timeless warning against unnecessarily trimming down general education in the movie “Mr. Holland’s Opus” (1995) should be reiterated: “Well, I guess you can cut the arts as much as you want, Gene (school principal). Sooner or later, these kids aren’t going to have anything to read or write about...You people create a new generation of children who will not have the ability to think or create or listen...” Let us also remember Mr. Chipping’s stirring exhortation in “Goodbye Mr. Chips” (1939): “I know the world’s changing. I see old traditions dying one by one. Grace, dignity, feeling for the past. All that matters today is a fat banking account. You’re trying to run the school like a factory for turning out moneymaking snobs.”
The Way Forward
In general, instead of immediately implementing the K to 12 scheme, we suggest the overhaul of the current 11-year Basic Education cycle (Kindergarten, Grades 1 to 6 at Grades 7 to 10) and additional investments for state colleges and universities, and to the whole education sector. Allotting sufficient budget for education is the first step to improve the 11-year Basic Education cycle. Currently, the Philippines is an outlier when it comes to the percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) allotted to education.
Hence, the additional budget that would be allotted to the K to 12 scheme will be better spent for improving the current 11-year Basic Education cycle first. Debates on whether to add 2 more years in high school should start once the 11-year Basic Education cycle from Kindergarten to Grade 10 is perfected.
Additional investments in the tertiary level, more especially in the fields of research and development (R&D) are also important. The Philippines lags behind many countries when it comes to R&D expenditures, hence the country is also weak in innovation and modernization of technologies in education and other fields, as data from the World Bank East Asia and Pacific Regional Report (2012) “Putting Higher Education to Work Skills and Research for Growth in East Asia” would prove.

FIGURE 9: Higher Education Research and Development Expenditures as % of GDP.

Additional budget for the tertiary level is important in ensuring that more students will finish their schooling. It has been proven that the “rate of return” of investment in studying in college and beyond is huge, as contained in a World Bank Report entitled “Skills for the Labor Market in the Philippines” by Emanuela di Gropello, Hong Tan and Prateek Tandon (2010).
FIGURE 10

According to World Bank East Asia and Pacific Region Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Department Report entitled “Education and Wage Differentials in the Philippines” (Xubei Luo at Takanobu Terada, 2009): “Tertiary education is to a large extent a prerequisite for high-paid occupations.” Thus, the anti-college education mantra of the K to 12 advocates will not be beneficial to the country in the long run.
Therefore, instead of encouraging students not to study in college under the K to 12 scheme, the government must maximize investments in tertiary education so as to attract more students to enroll and finish their college degrees. This is one of the keys to progress, as proven by developed nations. A country with highly educated citizens would certainly enjoy high levels if sustainable growth in the long run.
Towards Holistic Paradigm Shifts: Rethinking Educational and Economic Frameworks
Any additional budget for education will be useless unless the education and economic systems of the country are not reoriented. We can change the subjects as frequent as we can but we should emphasize inculcating values for national development and international solidarity, rather than subscribing to dependency on failed foreign frameworks and the race-to-the-bottom doctrine preached by global capital. Hence, the country’s labor export policy must be scrapped, including the related policy that treats schools in the Philippines as mere manufacturers of workers and professionals for export. To complement such endeavors, job opportunities within the country must be broadened through implementing a comprehensive economic plan that focuses on self-reliance or self-dependence. This can be done through national/nationalist industrialization, agrarian reform, and modernization of agriculture. Hence, the Philippines must utilize its resources for its own citizens’ progress, and not merely as exports to other countries. The Philippines have all natural and human resources needed by a country to become holistically developed and a net contributor to the global struggle against inequality and exploitation.