Total educational reform

The term “K+12” has misled some into thinking that the P-Noy government regards the addition of two years to basic education as the solution to all our education problems. P-Noy has never said that and neither has Secretary Armin Luistro. In fact, P-Noy and Luistro have repeatedly said the opposite, namely, that K+12 is only one of ten major education reforms that the government is undertaking.

During the campaign, P-Noy spelled out at least 10 education reforms. The others, in addition to K+12, are ensuring universal pre-school for all five-year-olds, integrating the Madaris schools into the education system as a subsystem, reintroducing technical-vocational education into high school (not just Senior High School), making every child a reader by the end of Grade 1 (instead of Grade 3 as in the previous administration), upgrading the proficiency of all students in mathematics and science, increasing government assistance to private schools, using three languages for instruction (mother tongue as main medium for all levels, Filipino for national communication, English for international communication), raising the quality of textbooks, and encouraging local governments to build and manage schools.

In essence, P-Noy’s educational agenda is really Total Education Reform. For convenience, let me refer to it as TER.

For several years now, educators have been advocating a Higher Education Reform Agenda (HESRA), equivalent to the Basic Education Reform Agenda (BESRA) that the government has adopted. International developments, such as the Bologna Process, Asia-wide accreditation, and the Washington Accord, have made it imperative that all (not just some) tertiary curricular programs be reengineered. The General Education Curriculum (GEC) has to be radically revised, not just because most of its content will already be taken up in Senior High School, but also because the Knowledge Economy and the decline in the world’s spirituality (as UNESCO puts it) demand new ways of educating leaders. Most difficult of all, parents have to be reeducated to accept technical-vocational education as equal in stature to academic degrees.

K+12, being merely a tenth part of TER, will not work if DepEd is left alone to implement it. Let me go through an example to show why DepEd cannot and should not do it alone.

Take Kindergarten. Starting June 2011, all five-year-olds will be required to take Kindergarten. Otherwise, they will not be allowed in June 2012 to go to Grade 1.

 That seems simple enough, until you realize that DepEd is not the only government agency in charge of Kindergarten. There are, for example, DSWD, ECCDC, LGUs, SUCs, and LUCs. To build schools and pay expenses, DPWH, DBM, and NEDA, among others, have to be on-board. There is also Congress, which has to amend laws that restrict the use of government funds to the system we have today. (I use acronyms because the full names would take up too much space in this column!)

It is also not only the government that needs to get into the act. The private sector, represented by various HEIs and pre-schools, needs to share expertise and even facilities for all children to have a real chance to be in Kindergarten. Even foreign funding agencies have to refocus their agendas in order to take into account the much larger number of children entering school.

Even the curriculum of Kindergarten cannot be left only to DepEd. It is foolhardy to design a curriculum for Kindergarten without knowing what the end product of education is going to be. This is the lesson we learn from outcomes-based approaches. The needs of society and the world, both in terms of employment and entrepreneurship, should dictate what CHED and TESDA should be producing. CHED and TESDA, in turn, should dictate what DepEd is producing. Within DepEd itself, Senior High School should determine what Junior High School graduates should know and be able to do, Junior High School should tell Elementary School teachers what to teach, and – to bring us back to Kindergarten – Grade 1 teachers should decide what Kindergarten graduates should be like. In other words, it is the output that should determine the input, not the other way around.

This is the reason that I think it an extremely wise move for Aquino and Luistro to convene an inter-agency Task Force on K+12.

The Task Force is headed by a steering committee, in turn headed by the heads of the three education agencies – Luistro (DepEd), Patricia Licuanan (CHED) and Joel Villanueva (TESDA). The steering committee consists of representatives of several stakeholders, including the Senate, the House of Representatives, NEDA, DOLE, DSWD, PBEd, COCOPEA, ACT, PASUC, PTCAs, and student governments. Five advisers have been named to the steering committee, namely, Ester Ogena (PNU), Mariano Piamonte (Party List), Ed de la Torre (E-net), Gregg Bañaga (Adamson), and myself.

Four Technical Working Groups report to the steering committee: Research Studies, Curriculum Enhancement, Nationwide Consultations / Education Summit, and Legislation / Communications. Each TWG has representatives from various stakeholder groups, as well as the top officials and experts of the three education agencies.

Nothing will happen, however, unless P-Noy takes personal charge of all of TER. Can he wield the tremendous powers of his office to make everybody march to the beat of a single drummer? I believe that he can. After all, he represents hope, including the hope that something will finally be done to totally reform our education system.