P10B sought to cover K-12 losses

THE COMMISSION on Higher Education (CHEd) will seek at least P10 billion in subsidy to cover losses that would be incurred from the “transition pains” of the K-12 program.

In a press conference yesterday, CHEd Executive Director Julito Vitriolo said the agency would present a proposal for a “stabilization fund” at Tuesday’s hearing in Congress, which it hoped would be approved and released by the Department of Finance and the Department of Budget Management.

The fund is also expected to address the imminent displacement of college teachers as a result of the implementation of the new general education curriculum (GEC), which removes several courses in English, Math, Natural Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences.

CHEd Chair Patricia Licuanan acknowledged that the commission had not anticipated all forms of transition pains in the K-12 program although it was aware of and addressing a number of them.

“We just have to see what will make the transition easier. But there will be transition pains. That is a given in any major change and K-12 is a major change,” she said.

Vitriolo said an initial P10 billion was needed to subsidize the tuition differential since there will be no college enrollments when Grades 11 and 12 or senior high school takes effect in 2016. “This is a small amount compared to the projected revenue losses of the private sector which could amount to hundreds of billions,” he said.

Licuanan assured the public that solutions were being studied to address the concern over the possible displacement of college professors.

“We understand their anxiety. This is not something that is easy and we do not have easy answers. We are studying this very carefully. We have a technical working group and the ideas coming out are radical but doable,” she said.

She said the technical working group had already made initial recommendations but their feasibility was still being reviewed. These include the employment of displaced higher education faculty to senior high school where they would practically be teaching the same subject and the grant of research load to deserving faculty.

Licuanan said the new GEC was necessary because the old one had remedial courses, such as English, Filipino and Math, which will be taught in the new K-12 curriculum.

“It would be unfair to have students take academic track courses in senior high school, only to repeat them in their first years of college,” she said.

She added that the old curriculum had disciplinal courses, such as General Psychology and Basic Economics, which had to be removed, resulting in the reduction of academic units from 50 or 60 to 36.