The K-12 Academic Curriculum in the Philippines: Fitting in the World Standard in Education
Although the transition already started in 2011, it did not immediately take into effect nationwide, and up until this year, many schools in the Philippines are still coping up with the changes. Not to speak of this, the K-12 curriculum is considered a good step in internationalizing the Philippine education.
Before the implementation of the K-12 program of the Department of Education (DepEd), Philippine students would go through 10 years of education to be qualified to enter college. The proposal of the program was to add 2 more years to reach college. It was the step of the country to join ASEAN integration and showcase students to other countries as well as promoting own education to exchange students abroad.
The transitioning of the academic curriculum became emergent due to incompetency of Filipino students in jobs available worldwide. For instance, when Filipino students who only underwent 10 years of education would compete to other students with 12 years of education, employers tend to hire first those who have longer education. Regardless of the quality service Filipinos could provide, education is the first to be checked in the professional world. Filipinos are internationally known as one of the best teachers of the English language, a teaching profession needed in foreign countries. However, due to backward education system in the Philippines, the Filipinos are still blocked from being the top priority in the mentioned job. So, the Education Department decided to import the internationally used education system, and that is to be named the K-12 Education Curriculum.
The K-12 curriculum stands for Kindergarten to Grade 12 education. It provided a lot of changes starting in 2011 but was only felt by the Filipinos in 2016 and more in 2017 and 2018. Along the changes were:
Senior High School
The 2 added years which are grades 10 and 12 are the senior high school. This is the most visible of all changes the K-12 curriculum brought. It replaced the old 4th year high school which was then called the senior year and became the juniors. The 4th year level is now grade 10 and the same thing happened to the lower years starting grade 7, the supposed 1st year level.
Senior high school was opened in 2016, 5 years after the announcement of the academic transition. It took long to be widely introduced to schools nationwide due to poor facilities and lack of teachers in public schools, and even during its first existence, schools were still experiencing difficulties to adjust to the changes. The good thing is that the Department of Education did not give it up. It still pursued the K-12 curriculum while solving the problems in public schools.
No First Year College in 2016
As high schools began accommodating students for senior high school, colleges and universities in the Philippines started their semesters without first year college students for the first time in history. It was not what it used to be. Many big universities were not used to having the semesters without the crowd of the first year students, but eventually they got along.
It is somewhat a negative effect of the academic transition. Many colleges and universities were forced to let go of some of their instructors due to the decrease of student population and enrollees of many courses, leaving many of them unemployed. Summer classes were also problematic for some of private academic institutions. 1st year students are the ones who are mostly to enroll in summer classes as many minor subjects are needed to be passed in such year. As an effect, tuition increases have become their immediate alternative.
Not to worry much about this, such problem was only temporary, and majority of schools nationwide have already been able to resolve this. They have just opened senior high schools, too.
Professional Jobs after High School
The senior high school offers vocational courses needed for jobs abroad. Some course offerings include engineering technology, programming, and other technical courses. Senior high school students are also required to write research papers and some of them reported that they already started making theses. This is something important to job application in the future because professional jobs require writing skills, too. It is needed in advertising and other promotional programs for companies or corporations.
Many parents argued the extended years would make them suffer more from taking care of their children’s finances as it would mean additional payment for tuition fees, book allowances, and lodging. But they must be happy instead that it will be beneficial to their children in the future. The education department once said that the added years would also shorten college to 2 years in a sense that the students could already seek decent jobs like college graduates, so it is just a tie. Going to college would already be an option to them.
No statistics are yet available on whether the K-12 curriculum is effective or not because the implementation is just recent. Also, the senior high students today have not still graduated. There are only speculations and predictions about it as of the moment. Nevertheless, the current education system is better than the previous one. At least, the Filipino students can now be globally recognized as credible workforces in the future, and that is an important thing to happen. There will be more professional Filipinos abroad, not only domestic helpers the Philippines is sending today. It can also change the mentality of the foreigners from how they treat Filipinos badly.
This year 2018, everything will be back to normal. The first batch of the senior high school students will graduate in March. Colleges and universities will have freshman enrollees again. Senior high graduates are hoped to enter the world market and be competitive there as they will be equipped with college-like knowledge and proficiencies in the field chosen. To those who will choose to enter college, they will no longer find difficulty getting in touch with the theories and methods in many field of specialization as these were already taught in the early years of education.
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