Roco: School opening smooth

Students lacked textbooks, teachers and classrooms. There were also protests against tuition increases and the new basic education curriculum.

Still, Education Secretary Raul Roco described as generally "smooth" yesterday’s opening of classes in public schools.

"It was smooth. It helped that some schools opened earlier so there were examples to follow," Roco said as some 17 million public school students started classes.

For this school year, Roco said the country’s 40,000 public elementary and high schools lack 22,000 teachers, 30 million schoolbooks and 6,000 classrooms.

Roco downplayed the protest rally that was staged by militant students and teachers against tuition increases and the implementation of the Restructured Basic Education Curriculum (RBEC).

"(That’s) nothing new. They always criticize whatever we do. Most of the school principals and teachers are supportive of RBEC, contrary to what (the protesters) are claiming," he said.

Education Undersecretary Ramon Bacani earlier said public school teachers have already been trained on the RBEC and the Department of Education has produced instructional materials.

Under RBEC, the eight-subject curriculum taught to grade school students would be trimmed to five, with Social Studies, Physical Education, Home Economics, Technology and Music integrated into a new subject, to be called "Makabayan."

English, Science, Mathematics and Filipino were retained as core subjects in public schools.

But according to Raymund Villanueva, secretary general of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), the protest rally they staged yesterday was only the first of a series of demonstrations they would hold this school year.

"More students will leave the classroom unless the government scraps its deregulation policy on tuition. This policy is being abused by many school owners to commercialize education," Villanueva said.

The Manila Public School Teachers Association (MPSTA), on the other hand, tagged RBEC as repressive and anti-Filipino because of its "globalist" orientation.

"The new curriculum takes away the human development component of the education process. Students will indeed be robot-like in the future - knowledgeable about skills subjects but uncreative and uncritical of their environment," said MPSTA president Benjie Valbuena. - With Romel Bagares