K-12 employment claims are all lies

We denounce the K-12 program of the Department of Education (DepEd). The propaganda spread by the former DepEd Secretary Armin Luistro and former president Benigno Aquino III promising easy employment for K-12 graduates without having to pursue higher learning or bachelor’s degree was filled with broken promises and propped up with lies.

The only thing clear here is that more youth will suffer from joblessness due to the inadequate education. Long before K-12, dismal state funding for education have long been the problem in the Philippines, and the implementation of the prolonged basic education through K-12 did nothing to improve the rotten to the core commercialized, human migration and export industrialization oriented education system in the country.

This was shown in the results of the Philippine Business Education survey that says 4 out of 5 companies won’t accept K-12 graduates.

From the very beginning, we have criticized the proposed K-12. It is not designed to fulfill the needs and deficiencies of the education system in the country and it is bound to fail if it continues to ignore the more pressing problems like lack of school buildings, insufficient number of teachers, low salaries of teachers, lacking learning materials and books, and corruption.

The government through K-12 program aims to train our youth to become cheap laborers and gear them to serve the foreign countries instead of developing local industries in the country that will employ them to develop the economy.

We also denounce President Rodrigo Duterte and the current DepEd Secretary Leonor Leonor Briones for failing to address the deficiencies and failure of the K-12 program.

There is nobody else to blame but the Duterte government for continuing the said program despite early indicators of failure and incapacity of the DepEd and despite the dissent of the students, parents, educators and children’s organizations. The demands of the people fell on deaf ears.

Because of the K-12 program, more children were not able to go to school because K-12 is not free. Public school classrooms and facilities were not enough and it pushed poor families to enroll their children in private schools. Students were obliged to comply with expensive projects and other requirements.

The growing number of Filipino K-12 graduates will only add up to the amassed reserved labor force in the country. K-12 has proven to be be a wrong band aid solution to the chronic education crisis, therefore it is rightful to demand to immediately stop it.

The government should fully subsidize education as a basic social service and address the pains of low salary and contractualization among teachers and the shortage of classrooms and school buildings.--Eule Rico Bonganay, Salinlahi Alliance for Children’s Concerns