CHED seeks P10-B stabilization fund for college professors

MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) will ask Congress to put up a P10-billion “stabilization fund” to assist college professors who will be displaced by the full implementation of the K to 12 program.

CHED executive director Julito Vitriolo said they would propose the creation of the Higher Education Institutions Stabilization Fund in today’s hearing of the House committee on higher education.

 He said the fund aims to “augment the requirements of affected HEIs (higher education institutions), both public and private.”

“We’re looking at areas where we can support (the affected HEIs),” Vitriolo said in a press conference yesterday.

“The salary differential of the teachers probably will be supported,” he added.

He said private and public universities and colleges are expected to lose billions of pesos when students enter Grades 11 and 12 instead of college in school years 2016-2017 and 2017 and 2018.

As part of the implementation of the K to 12 law, CHED has reduced the General Education Curriculum in college from 51 or 63 units to 36.

The Council of Teachers and Staff of Colleges and Universities had said more than 85,000 faculty members, who are teaching general education subjects, may lose their jobs when the mandatory implementation of senior high school starts.

CHED commissioner Cynthia Bautista said they are still gathering data on the number of general education teachers that would be affected.

The old college-level general education subjects, including Filipino, will be transferred to the K to 12 curriculum, specifically in the senior high school (Grades 11 and 12).

CHED Chairman Patricia Licuanan said the possible displacement of higher education teachers as a result of the new curriculum “is indeed a serious concern.”

However, she said there are remedies being discussed, such as the assignment of disciplinal courses to former general education teachers, deployment of some higher education faculty to senior high school and the grant of research load to deserving faculty.

Licuanan said a technical working group is studying the challenges posed by the transition to K to 12, and is working out alternative solutions with the help of the Department of Education, Department of Labor and Employment and other concerned agencies.

Maria Serena Diokno, head of the CHED’s Technical Panel on General Education, said consultations with the HEIs nationwide were conducted in 2012 and 2013 before it approved the new curriculum.

Meanwhile, the technical panel has proposed that at least nine units of the new general education courses must be taught in Filipino.

The panel has made the recommendation following criticisms from various groups on the removal of the Filipino subject in the new curriculum.

CHED said the public consultations on the new proposal would start in August.

Last May 23, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts’ National Committee on Language and Translation signed a resolution asking the CHED to revise the general education curriculum to include nine mandatory units of Filipino for all courses at the tertiary level.

A group of Filipino professors and advocates of the Filipino language also opposed CHED Memorandum Order 20 that removes the teaching of Filipino from the general education curriculum.

The Pambansang Samahan sa Linggwistika at Literaturang Filipino, Ink. said the CHED memorandum violates Article XIV Section 6 of the 1987 Constitution, which says “the government shall take steps to initiate and sustain the use of Filipino as a medium of official communication and as language of instruction in the educational system.”

Licuanan, however, said the memo provides that the entire curriculum or parts of it may be taught in Filipino or English.

De La Salle University Filipino professor David Michael San Juan said the CHED memo would mean loss of jobs or less income for over 10,000 full-time and 20,000 part-time Filipino professors.

Licuanan said the displacement is not focused on Filipino teachers but spans all the disciplines.

She stressed that “it would be unfair to have students take academic track courses in senior high school, only to repeat them in the first years of college.”