K to 12 may affect college teachers

CEBU, Philippines - A group of professors from a university in Cebu City expressed concern that most college teachers will be affected by the full implementation of the K to 12 program of the Department of Education (DepEd).

This is because all the general education subjects offered in the first and second year of college courses will be moved to Grades 11 and 12.

The group from the University of San Jose-Recoletos (USJ-R) voiced out this concern during the assembly of the Association of Government Information Officers (AGIO) in Region VII yesterday.

They said they will be affected by the two-year gap in the enrollment of the first and second year college students in 2016.

The Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), one of DepEd’s partners has prepared trainings for the teachers that will be affected by the program.

Luz Dizon of the Philippine Regulatory Commission (PRC) said that only those teachers who passed the Licensure Examinations for Teachers (LET) can teach basic education.

College teachers who are licensed in their respective field can still teach.

Meanwhile, Dr. Carmencita Dinampo of DepEd’s Curriculum and Learning Management Division said they already started with the Grade 1 and Grade 7 in implementing the K to 12 this year.

DepEd is using the spiral progression approach in teaching the students and the teachers were trained last summer as part of their preparation for the K to 12.

There were 4, 838 teachers trained for Grade 1 with a budget of P39.28 million.

For Grade 7 there were 2,526 trained by Cebu Normal University (CNU) and 120 were trained by the Science High School with a total budget of P19 million.

 “These trained teachers will now be the one training their fellow teachers as they go back to their respective divisions. We also prepared are with our materials as we want the teachers to focus on how to develop their instructional materials,” she said.

DepEd-7 alloted P32 million for the reproduction of the refined K to 12 instructional materials for Grade 1 that will be distributed all over the region.

Three subjects were also added in the curriculum, which include MAPEH (Music, Arts, Physical Education and Health), Edukasyong Pagpapakatao and Mother Tounge Based subjects.

— (FREEMAN)