The Rise and Demise of the K-12 hype: A systems analysis of the K-12 program

of the Republic of the Philippines

Introduction

“Education,” as Nelson Mandela said, “is the most powerful weapon which you
can use to change the world.” And while every country on Earth has a schooling
system, there’s a vast discrepancy in how well each country is able to use it and
arm its children with education, leaving the most successful, high-income nations
racing ahead of the struggling ones.

The K to 12 Basic Education Program is the flagship program of the Department

of Education in its desire to offer a curriculum which is attuned to the 21st century.
This is in pursuance of the reform thrusts of the Basic Education Sector Reform
Agenda, a package of policy reforms that seeks to systematically improve critical
regulatory, institutional, structural, financial, cultural, physical and informational
conditions affecting basic education provision, access and delivery on the ground.
The Department seeks to create a basic education sector that is capable of
attaining the country’s Education for All Objectives and the Millennium
Development Goals by the year 2015 and President Noynoy Aquino’s 10-point
basic education agenda by 2016.These policy reforms are expected to introduce
critical changes necessary to further accelerate, broaden, deepen and sustain
the Department’s effort in improving the quality of basic education. However,
despite the hype and the budget pumping the K-12 curriculum program leaves
much to be desired. The various challenges that it is facing despite the fact that it
had already been in place for a couple of years only reveal one thing- that in its
preparation and implementation there leaves much to fill in.

This paper will delve into three areas to wit: 1. Development of the K-12 in the
Philippines, 2. System analysis of the K-12 implementation in the Philippines, and
3. Possible solutions to the problems in the implementation of the K-12.

I. Development of K-12 in the Philippines

“K to 12” stands for kindergarten plus 12 years of elementary and secondary

education. This educational system for basic and secondary education is widely
adopted around the world. Prior to its adoption here in the Philippines, the coutnry
remained as one of the very few around the world which did not have a K-12
education system. The objective of the program is to be able to produce more
productive and responsible citizens equipped with the essential competencies
and skills for both life-long learning and employment.From among various
proposals and studies conducted to come up with an enhanced model that is
suitable to the Philippine context, DepEd proposed the K-6-4-2 model or the K to
12 model. This model involves kindergarten, six years of elementary education,
four years of junior high school (Grades 7-10), and two years of senior high
school (Grades 11-12). The two years of senior high school intend to provide time
for students to consolidate acquired academic skills and competencies. The
curriculum will allow specializations in science and technology, music and arts,
agriculture and fisheries, sports, business and entrepreneurship. The change is
two-fold. It will give focus not only to the curriculum enhancement but also to the
transition management as well. The intention of K to 12 is not merely to add two
years of schooling but more importantly, to enhance the basic education
curriculum. Maramag 2012 points out that the present ten-year curriculum is
congested wherein students are forced to absorb all the knowledge and skills
necessary in a short and limited span of time. As a result, high school graduates
are often unprepared for employment, entrepreneurship, or even higher
education. They do not yet possess the basic competencies or even emotional
maturity essential for the world outside the school. High school graduates who do
not pursue higher education are thus unproductive or vulnerable to exploitative
labor practices. In the same context, those who may be interested to put up their
own business cannot enter into legal contracts yet. This partly explains why the
number of unemployed Filipinos is increasing at an alarming rate. The short
duration of the basic education system is also a disadvantage for the overseas
Filipino workers (OFWs), especially the professionals, and those who intend to
study abroad. DepEd further claims that the Filipino graduates are not
automatically recognized as professionals abroad because the ten-year
curriculum is usually perceived as insufficient. The DepEd therefore strongly
believes that the K to12 program will give every learner the opportunity to receive
quality education based on an enhanced and decongested curriculum that is
internationally recognized and competitive.

II. System Analysis of the K-12 implementation

In the Philippines, it is the lawmakers that decide the course of policies and laws
with the President as the implementing arm. It must be noted that most of the
country’s law makers are not teachers. Policy making and implementation is
usally approched from the top and implemented to the bottom although there are
some manifestations of the ideal bottom- top approach, it is usually the law
makes who decide what bill to propose and what bill to lobby for. There is no
congruent agenda setting in line and attuned with the realities of grass roots
implementation. Agenda setting means that political parties or influential interest
groups are willing to discuss this problem and set it on their agenda. Now the
decision upon the problem depends on the political responsibilities who hold the
power in the moment of the decision making process and they decide according
to their political engagement. The main actors are regarded to be the
decision-makers who are responsible to formulate an efficient statute which suits
to the kind of existing problem. To increase the level of efficiency top-down
theorists thus demand a clear and consistent statement of the policy goals, a
minimization of the number of involved actors, a limitation of the extent of change
necessary and to find an institution which supports the point of view of the policy
makers in order to guarantee that the implementers sympathize with the new
statute.

The K-12 being a product of a top-down approach,erroneously assumes that

once Congress has enacted the Enhanced Basic Education Law it will
automatically implement itself and leave the adjusment to those who will be
affected. The approach clearly favors the decision-makers as key actors in the
process of implementation and does not pay much attention to the administrative
staff that carries out the legal act. For them the politicians own the expertise to
formulate a good law and the role the implementers play - to deliver the
legislation to the people and does not receive much appreciation because of this
there are numerous presumptions and target goals of the K-12 which has not
been reached because of the lack of a proper analysis, communication and
feedbacking necesssary in policy moves such as this.

For example, The K-12 program offers a decongested 12-year program that gives
students sufficient time to master skills and absorb basic competencies. This is
clearly erroneous becuase it fails to take into account the process of curriculum
development. Mastery and absorption of basic skills is not about the length of
time in school it is about the development of a proper curriculum which is attuned
to the capabilities of the 21st century learner. Measurement and assessment have
important role that determine to development of students’ cognitive, affective and
psychometric skills, resolve to learning deficiencies of unsuccessful students and
motivate to successful students (Semerci, 2007). Measurement and assessment
is used different purpose in different phases of instructional activities. These
assessment types are diagnostic assessment, formative assessment, and
summative assessment. Summative assessment have commonly used in
education systems. Summative assessment is sufficient that students are
classified into successful or unsuccessful or determining whether students learn
some knowledge and skills in units or not. The K-12 injects another dimesion of
assessment into the picture and that is performance based- outputs.
Performance assessment tries to establish what students can do as distinct from
what he/his knows. But what the K-12 fails to include in its implementation is the
consideration of the problems which are being encountered by the teachers who
are the main point persons in the implementaiton of the K-12 as a result, teachers
experience difficulty in the preparation of performance tasks which will
adequately measure the abilities of students.

Policy makers faill to put into consideration the fact that in a classroom of 45, only
10 may be attuned to performance tasks. Does it mean that the 35 are slow
learners? No, it does not and yet the current systmem assumes that if they fail to
perform the task properly they failed to establish that they have mastered what
they have learned. Education Philosophy would teach us that each student is a
tabula rasa, a blank slate which can retain information and perform tasks
depending on his own capability. While the new curriculum under the K-12 aims
to decongest, it does so by compromising established educational principles on
learning.

Second, Students of the new system will graduate at the age of 18 and will be
ready for employment, entrepreneurship, middle level skills development and
higher education upon graduation. This is another assumption which illustrates
the gap in the K-12 system. Readiness for work is not measured by the number of
years in school. Work readiness is often understood as the ability to obtain
employment that provides wages sufficient to support a small family and that
offers the ability to advance in the occupation (Department of Labor, 2000). One
main component often linked with work readiness discussions centers on the
ability of students to be able to carry out responsibilities as citizens, family
members, and workers with the skills learned through the educational process.
Employment skills in the real world are varied they can be soft skills (people skills
needed for everyday life) and hard skills (technical or administrative procedures
related to an organization’s core business) that are transferable across industries
and are considered valuable for any occupation at any level of education.

Today, high school students are commonly classified as too ambitious and
typically unable to reach often lofty goals set for their future careers (Schneider &
Stevenson, 1999). Gamboa 2010 found that if high school experts compare the
occupational goals of current high school students with projected needs of the
Philippine economy, the occupational outlook is very bleak.Certainly realistic
expectations on wage and ambition are misaligned, as are strategies that
effectively align students with the basic work readiness skills they need in order to
survive beyond high school. Defining the focus of work readiness for high school
students is still evolving for educators; however, certain philosophical arguments
relating to the purpose of career and technical education have rarely changed
(Rojewski, 2002). In the Philippines, there is an existing skills mismatch. While
the K-12 offers different tracs which include tracs for technical vcocational, most
parents and students will still choose the trac which will eventually lead to a
college diploma. Questions arise daily as to whether high school students
graduate with the basic skills they need to survive in today’s economy. This is
especially important for those students who are going directly into the workforce.
With a major focus on testing and policy, it is often doubted by educators whether
this approach will lead to thriving citizens without somehow connecting this to
career aspirations (Hull, 2004). Policy makers fail to put into consideration that
there is a lack of resources devoted to students who were not college bound
conspired to produce minimal educational results.

The Philippine K-12 version is amiss in the primary intention of the school-
to-work goal of the K-12. The intent of school-to-work programs is to create a
linkage between secondary education and the workplace while remaining deeply
grounded in contextual learning. Each type of initiative seeks to integrate
academic and vocational education, workplace competencies, and explicit
connection of learning with careers (Miller, 2002). Most technical vocational
choices lead to what can be termed as dead-end menial jobs and while they are
high paying outside the Philippines, legislators fail to consider is the cultural
nuances of pride attached by the Filipinos to a diploma. As cited in The Primer on
the New K-12 Educational System by Patricia Tanya-Velasco on March 6, 2012:
At present, the Philippines is the only country in Asia and among the three
remaining countries in the world that uses a 10-year basic education cycle.
According to a presentation made by the South East Asian Ministers of Education
Organization (SEAMEO-INNOTECH) on Additional Years in Philippine Basic
Education (2010), the comparative data on duration of Basic and Pre-University
Education in Asia shows that the Philippines allots 10 years not just for the basic
education cycle but also for the pre-university education while all the other
countries have either 11 or 12 years in their basic education cycle. Achievement
scores highlight our students’ poor performance in national examinations. The
National Achievement Test (NAT) results for grade 6 in SY 2009-2010 showed
only a 69.21% passing rate while the NAT results for high school is at a low
46.38%. Moreover, international tests results in 2003 Trends in International
Mathematics and Science study (TIMSS) show that the Philippines ranked 34th
out of 38 countries in HS Math and 43rd out of 46 countries in HS II Science.
Moreover, the Philippines ranked the lowest in 2008 even with only the science
high schools joining the Advanced Mathematics category. The present curriculum
is described as congested. This means that students do not get enough time to
perform tasks because the curriculum is designed to be taught in a span of 12
years and not 10 years. The more obvious result of this is the fact that most high
school students graduate without the readiness to take upon higher education or
employment. These students are not equipped with the basic skills or
competencies needed at work but in a recent SWS survey (3rd quarter 2015) 7
out of 10 Senior High grduates will not be ready to face the current demands of
the job market becuase the strand which they have selected are either geared
towards them earning a diploma or towards a more technical collegiate course.

Error 404: System Analysis not found

According to the DepEd discussion paper (2010), the K-12 curriculum aims to
enable every child “to achieve mastery of core competencies and skills” (p.6) and
develop tracks based on the student’s interests and competencies. What are the
core competencies and skills needed by any individual across cultures? The
three R’s: reading, writing and arithmetic. When are these core competencies
learned? Research has shown that the three 3R’s should commence at age 3 or
for some even earlier. Philosopher Froebel, known as the Father of kindergarten,
established the first kindergarten in Germany in 1837. Influenced by Rousseau,
Pestalozzi and Herbart, Froebel believed children were social creatures, and
learning was the most natural and efficient through activity and play was an
essential part of learning. He believed that teaching methods between a younger
and older child ought to be vastly different. N. Gerry House (2007) in “Educating
All the City’s Children,” Schools that Learn: The single most powerful thing that a
community can do is to provide children with high-quality preschool experiences
from birth through age five. It doesn’t matter whether it’s through government,
community, private, or home-based preschools, as long as there are high quality
learning centers.

The truth of the matter in Philippine education is teachers in the most basic level
are ill equipped theoretically and structurally. In Barangays the ratio of 25
kindergarten students is to one teacher exists. While the governement cannot be
stopped with the implementaiton of the program the lack of facilities and the lack
of adequate teaching manuals make it hard for basic learning to be effective. The
core problem lies with politicians formulating policies with technical working
groups of the favored. Simply put, a plumber is designing the school curriculum
while teacher’s ideas taken from the grass roots level is left in the cubicles of
ignorance.
If there has been proper system analysis- a genuine effort to put in place a
feedbacking mechanism problems such as lack of classrooms and
unpreparedness of teachers will not arise.

The treatment of early childhood care and education in the Dakar Framework had
its roots in the rights-based approach of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Since 2000, there has been an increasing focus on early childhood, in both poor
and rich countries, informed by evidence of its fundamental consequences for
future individual well-being, with further research emerging of the importance of
the first 1,000 days after conception.

Inequality persists in the transition from primary to secondary school. For

example, in the Philippines, just 69% of primary school graduates from the
poorest families continued into lower secondary, compared with 94% from the
richest households. Access to textbooks also become a problem. Books cannot
be printed fast enough and buildings cannot be built fast enough to accomodate
the growing population of children in basic education. Textbooks, the most
accessible part of the curriculum, reflect broad educational emphases and
changes in them over time (Heyneman, 2006). Thus, updating textbooks is
important so they are aligned with the latest developments in education and
subject areas. Poor school infrastructure and lack of maintenance are major
problems. In the Philippines, only 32% of schools were in good physical condition
– without broken windows or peeling paint.

The Philippines, along with Cambodia, China, Indonesia,and Thailand, national

or subnational governments set lower secondary curriculum content, instructional
time and teacher salaries, and allocate resources to schools, but leave the choice
of teaching methods and support activities for students to schools (King and
Cordeiro Guerra, 2005). In the late 1990s, textbooks were not reaching students
and those that were delivered were of poor quality. Some 40% of textbook
deliveries could not be accounted for. Illegal payments to government officials
amounted to between 20% and 65% of the public education budget earmarked
for textbooks. Corruption and abuse of power were endemic. The National
Textbook Delivery Program, rolled out in 2003, helped improve transparency in
textbook delivery and distribution, aiming to increase accountability over the full
procurement cycle, from bidding to production to final delivery. The programme
was mandated to ensure, before distribution, that private publishers provided
books of the right quality and quantity. The role of civil society was to make sure
the correct quantities of books were disbursed and delivered to schools according
to schedule.

Teachers are beholden to policy makers yet it is the teachers who know the basic
problems that need to be addressed. An instance is the lack of a harmmonized
teaching philosophy embraced by different schools. The K-12 system was
designed to decongest and if it were true to its noble purpose it would take less
than the bat of an eye to realize that the only way to properly implement it was to
revist the Essentialist School of thought.

The school of essentialism must be revisited. Essentialism refers to the

"traditional" or "Back to the Basics" approach to education. It is so named
because it strives to instill students with the "essentials" of academic knowledge
and character development. The term essentialism as an educational philosophy
was originally popularized in the 1930s by the American educator William Bagley.
The philosophy itself, however, had been the dominant approach to education in
America from the beginnings of American history. Essentialists believe that there
is a common core of knowledge that needs to be transmitted to students in a
systematic, disciplined way. The emphasis in this conservative perspective is on
intellectual and moral standards that schools should teach. The core of the
curriculum is essential knowledge and skills and academic rigor. Although this
educational philosophy is similar in some ways to Perennialism, Essentialists
accept the idea that this core curriculum may change. Schooling should be
practical, preparing students to become valuable members of society. It should
focus on facts-the objective reality out there--and "the basics," training students
to read, write, speak, and compute clearly and logically. Schools should not try to
set or influence policies. Students should be taught hard work, respect for
authority, and discipline. Teachers are to help students keep their nonproductive
instincts in check, such as aggression or mindlessness. In the essentialist system,
students are required to master a set body of information and basic techniques
for their grade level before they are promoted to the next higher grade. The
content gradually moves towards more complex skills and detailed knowledge.

This is not the reality in today’s K-12 in the Philippines. Teachers are placed in a
very stressful situtation where they are forced to let a pupil pass despite not being
ready for the next level lest they face the dire consequences of a reduced school
budget. The goal of creating a strong foundation is over thrown. "Research
findings in applied linguistics and reading research consistently show a strong
correlation between reading proficiency and academic success at all ages, from
the primary school right through to university level: students who read a lot and
who understand what they read usually attain good grades” (Pretorious, 2000).
An ACT news release (Aug. 17, 2005) stated, "Reading skills are critical to a
student’s success in college courses across the board... students who don’t have
adequate reading comprehension skills are likely to struggle.” Proficient reading
skills are inextricably linked to problem solving, critical thinking, writing,
researching, reasoning, and creativity. In other words, a student who is a good
reader is more likely to do well in school and pass exams than a student who is a
weak reader. This has a direct effect in the student’s readiness to take on the
workforce. An employeee who has higher comprehension skills has more
chances of understanding complex work instructions and have more access to
higher compensation and promotion as compared to those whose reading
comprehension are only on the average level. College school teachers complain
about the poor reading skills of their students. In the University of San Agustin
one out of every three first year students are required to take up English 100 or
Remedial English every school year becuase they have graduated from
highschool with poor reading, writing and understanding skills. College teachers
struggle with the lessons as there are students who cannot even read nor
pronounce ten letter words let alone express themselves using proper
subject-verb agreement.

Plato’s model was “functionalist” – a model designed to produce competent

adults to meet the needs of the state. Educators could work to produce people
who are both self-actualized and useful to the state. There are too many
controversies and praises that hound this new law, however, many schools in the
country have to buckle up to cope with the demands as they have already been
competing globally even before the passage of the law. And in order to meet the
global demands, the schools have to face the challenges that come with the K to
12 program implementation
The K to 12 aims to create cheaper, more ‘exploitable’ labor. The program
ensures to make more ‘semi-skilled’ youths enter the labor force as early as 18
years old, which will make the unemployment problem worse. The net effect will
be lower wages for workers. It takes many hours to produce a detailed lesson
plan as well as make the necessary visual aids. Most of the time the teachers
would sit down and write while letting the pupils copy the lessons on the board.
They have no more time to explain the lessons to the pupils. The integrity of the
National Achievement Test has oftentimes been compromised. The results of the
NAT determine the ranking of the schools and thus the amount of the
performance bonus of teachers.This is the real picture of the K-12.

The United Nation’s education arm has also noticed that the Philippines is far
from reaching its educational targets. The share of national income invested in
education, which equalled the subregional average in 1999, had fallen behind by
2009 at 2.7 percent of GNP, compared with an average of 3.2 percent for East
Asia. UNESCO has pointed out that a lack of a proper analysis of the problem of
education in the Philippines out of the six Education For All (EFA) goals the
Philippines is yet to get a 100% in any of the 6 EFA goal.

III. Solutions to issues of the K-12

The K-12 experience of the Philippines from conception to implementation is a

political product. It is a cacophony of political accomodation and horse meat
trading that one encounters in dealing with politicians, who in their entire lives
have never been teacher. Perhaps, the most discussed pitfall of the K-to-12
program is the government’s ill-preparedness for the full-blown implementation of
the curriculum.

The main argument of the proponents of the program is that adding two years to
the basic education curriculum will vastly improve the performance and
competency of Filipino students and make Philippine basic education at par with
international standards.
However, such argument was never proven by quantitative research. On the
contrary, in a study authored by UP professor Abraham Felipe and Fund for
Assistance to Private Education executive director Carolina Porio, titled “Length
of School Cycle and the Quality of Education,” it was shown that there was “no
basis to expect that lengthening the educational cycle calendar-wise, will improve
the quality of education.”

While the K-to-12 program implements a “spiral progression approach” to

teaching, wherein subjects are intended to be taught in a manner of increasing
complexity, initial observations show that the new curriculum is rather redundant
and overall focus on basic concepts is largely diffused.

In chemistry, for example, the concept of the atom is introduced belatedly in

Grade 8. This is in stark contrast with the curricula in countries, like Singapore or
Germany, where the concept is taught in earlier grade levels. The quality of
instruction under K-to-12 program is also far from being assured. With the severe
lack of facilities and teachers, the practice of shorter hours of instruction is set to
continue.
Aligning the basic education curriculum to the demands of the international
market is problematic as the so-called “in-demand” jobs are more often than not
temporary and subject to the rise and fall of global demand. Take for instance the
sudden boom—and subsequent bust—of the demand for nurses abroad.
Ultimately, the K-to-12 program is designed to push students to leave formal
education early and not pursue college. In effect, the government is bringing
down the age of the employable pool.

With more high school students dropping out before finishing high school or
choosing to join the workforce directly after Grade 12, more workers will soon be
competing for scarce jobs, bloating the ranks of the unemployed. Such a scenario
will result in the gradual lowering of wages as job competition will allow both local
and foreign employers to forcibly introduce lower wage rates.

What could have prevented these issues from arising was proper feed backing
from the grass root stakeholders- teachers, policy formulators, and the
community. A communication and information strategy has to decide, which
materials, events and contents are suitable for which target group. A
timeschedule has to be put up parallel to launch each information event at the
appropriate time – that is when the best positive effect can be
expected.Participation and information of all involved parties should be regarded
as an important aspect to gain accepted goals and accepted policies. One
problem of environmentally sound policies is that the measures to achieve
changes in the educational systems heading towards sustainability are in most
cases unpopular.
Feedbacks can be used to fuel scenario techniques. Scenario technique is the
vital one for policy formulation, control of success the one which provides the
necessary quality of implementation. Both share the tools participation,
awareness raising and public relations and project management. Project
management ensures a consistent course of events, whereas participation and
awareness raising target at the overcoming of political and especially social
barriers and at guaranteeing success of projects, plans, implemented measures,
etc. under the aspect of acceptance.

It is not too late for the K-12 system to be re-evaluated, but is is going to take
much communication to do so.

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