Under Republic Act No. 10533 (Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013), a student will have to complete Kindergarten, Grades 1 to 6 (elementary), Grades 7 to 10 (junior high school) and Grades 11 to 12 (senior high school)—in all 13 years—before he can receive a high school diploma. That is, if he stops at Grade 10, he will only receive a junior high school certificate and not a diploma.
According to critics, this does not only limits one’s potential for growth but also his career opportunities as students who did not continue senior high school will not be accepted to take any college degree nor a technical-vocational certificate program.
This scenario led Senator Antonio Trillanes to argue in making K-to-12 program only optional. He tried putting up a strong ground claiming that aside from the ill-preparedness of the country for the program, students who failed to enroll in Grade 11 will mostly be disadvantaged since they will be classified as undergraduates who cannot pursue higher learning. He further noted that if K-to-12 will be optional, finishing Grade 10 will be enough to be qualified and be admitted into college. On the other hand, students who wish to continue senior high school may still to do so and it is up to employers to decide if they want to hire Grade 10 or K-to-12 graduates.
Countering the premise, DepEd stated that K-to-12 aims on making basic education at par with other countries by extending the number years. And though no quantitative research have proven such argument, the department was still very positive on its beneficial impact to the economy and ultimately to Filipino families in a span of six years.
The program has four career tracks to which DepEd aims to deploy majority of the students to academic and technical-vocational-livelihood tracks. Apparently, this move is in response to the growing need of the international market for skilled workers.
Currently, Philippines has always been a part of a globalized society with nearly ten percent of overall population working beyond the shores of their native land. And as education becomes part of the institutional mechanism that divides the rich and the poor, the issues regarding educational opportunities turned out to be more serious.
K-to-12 may have been our statesmen’s respond to this and so makes aligning our basic education curriculum to the international landscape central to the solution. We have had the first entrants of this spirally progressing program. Needless to say, our hopes should be one with DepEd for finding critics’ fears of more high school students dropping out before finishing high school or immediately joining the workforce afterwards and not entering college, along with more workers competing for scarce jobs leading to lower wage rates unfounded
By: Lourdes L. Manguiob | Teacher III | Samal National High School
