What about the school opening?

Lost in the siege by the Maute group on Marawi City and the declaration by President Rodrigo Duterte of martial law in Mindanao are the reports on the preparation for next week’s opening of classes for school year 2017-2018. Early last month, the Department of Education (DepEd) released the school calendar that pegs the opening of classes on June 5.

When President Rodrigo Duterte assumed his post in June last year, the transition at DepEd was also ushered in with the replacement of Bro. Armin Luistro by Leonor Briones. Luistro presided over the shift in the school curriculum from the old 10-year basic education system to the current K-12 setup. Briones came into the picture when Grade 11 of senior high school opened.

The initial worries that the Duterte administration would scuttle the new system were eased when Briones announced the continuation of the K-12 implementation. That should mean that the new government would solve the problems whose answers were left hanging by the previous administration, like providing the resources needed especially for K-12’s senior high school program.

This school year, students in Grade 11 would move to Grade 12, which demands additional classrooms, teachers and books (granting that the Grade 12 curriculum has already been adequately laid down). DepEd has been largely silent on this one, although we believe that it has prepared well for that. Still, we ask: Is the education department prepared for the influx of Grade 12 students?

That point does not include the problems in the other school levels, especially with classrooms and books. Schools in the country conducted the usual Brigada Eskwela in the middle of last month to prepare the classrooms for the opening of classes. But the matter of whether the number of classrooms is adequate was not tackled much.

Briones seems to like to do her job without fanfare, unlike previous DepEd chiefs. But she needs to inform the public of what is being done to address old problems in the country’s educational setup and to answer the new ones that crop up, especially in the light of the implementation of the final year of the K-12 shift.