Senate review of K-12 pushed
SEN. Sherwin Gatchalian has formally called for a Senate review of the implementation of the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013 or the K to 12 Law.
Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate Committee on Basic Education, Arts and Culture, said the inquiry’s findings would craft policy recommendations and complementary laws to ensure the K to 12 program’s effective implementation.
The lawmaker also said the inquiry aims to support the Department of Education’s shift of focus from “access” to “quality” education, which is central to its national reform plan “SulongEduKalidad.”
“The K to12 is an important reform in our system of education needed to help ensure our youth for our industries. However, [in the] past years, we saw the various challenges that the program faces. We want to address this in order for us to uplift the quality of education in the country,” Gatchalian said.
According to the lawmaker, part of the challenges hounding K to 12 is students’ learning outcomes, including the declining National Achievement Test (NAT) scores. In the 2018 NAT, Grade 6 and Grade 10 students garnered mean percentage scores of 37.44 and 44.59, respectively, both fall under the “low mastery” level.
He added that the poor NAT performance was also reflected in the 2018 results of the Program for
International Student Assessment, a global triennial survey by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development which measures students’ proficiency in reading comprehension, science and mathematics.
The said survey showed that out of 79 countries, the Philippines ranked lowest in Reading Comprehension and secondlowest in both science and mathematics. Another challenge is how the K to 12 program is living up to its promise of producing employable graduates.
A 2018 survey of 500 companies by online portal JobStreet revealed that only 24 percent of employers are willing to hire K to 12 graduates. Most employers still prefer candidates with college degrees.
Gatchalian said the inquiry should also look closely at the readiness and capacity of schools to implement the K to 12 program, which allows senior high school students to choose specializations such as academic, technical-vocational-livelihood, sports, or arts and design.
A quantitative service delivery study conducted by the World Bank shows that teachers were also ill prepared for senior high school as evidenced by their low performance in terms of knowledge of subject matter using the K to 12 curriculum.