The academic track

The K to 12 curriculum was designed after the college-level General Education Curriculum (GEC) was revised. This is crucial to understanding both curriculums.

The reform of the GEC started on Dec. 1, 2008, when then Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Commissioner Nona Ricafort asked me to submit a proposal to convene a new Technical Panel on Pre-Baccalaureate, following recommendations done by the Presidential Task Force for Education, headed by then Ateneo de Manila University president Fr. Bienvenido Nebres, S.J. (The Task Force submitted its final report to then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on Jan. 12, 2009.)

Then CHED Chair Emmanuel Y. Angeles asked me on April 13, 2009, to convene the Technical Panel and gave me full authority to choose my members. Of course, following the advice of my idol Brother Andrew Gonzalez FSC, to always choose people better than me, I convened a Dream Team: psychologist and mathematician Queena Lee-Chua, UP general education guru and former VP Maria Serena “Maris” I. Diokno, and former CHED commissioner in charge of GE Ma. Cristina D. Padolina. (This team was much later augmented by Nelia Cruz Sarcol, Fr. Joel Tabora, S.J., and Flordeliza Francisco.)

We went through the usual consultations with all sectors and regions, but our work was briefly interrupted when the Benigno Simeon Aquino III became president. (By the way, I take the trouble to spell out names of people and institutions because this column is read outside the Philippines by non-Filipinos.)

We were working on the assumption that two years would be added to higher education. After all, we were working under CHED. Aquino, however, wanted to fulfill a promise he had made during his campaign for the presidency: he announced that the two years would be added to basic, rather than higher, education.

Our Technical Panel then changed its focus to the first two years of college. We looked at the old GEC and came to the conclusion that it was not college-level work. (I have written quite a number of columns about this, and will do so again in the future for those who missed my series on the GEC.) We then went through all the necessary consultations with all regions and sectors and pieced together a new GEC.

CHED Chair Patricia B. Licuanan issued the first official memorandum based on our work. This was CHED Memorandum Order No. 2, series of 2011, issued on Feb. 18, 2011. It specified that the new GEC would consist of only 36 units. (The old GEC consisted of 63 units for humanities, communication, and social sciences students, and 51 units for all other students.) The new GEC was eventually mandated by CHED in CMO 20, series of 2013.

We realized that it would be impossible for students to take the new GEC subjects if they were not prepared. As a result, we formulated College Readiness Standards (CRS), which would serve as a minimum qualification for entering higher education.

How were we going to check if an applicant to a college had fulfilled the CRS? The logical way would have been to have a national exam (similar to the SAT in the USA), but we found a faster way.

When the Steering Committee of the K to 12 reform was created, we, as well as members of other CHED Technical Panels, were recruited as senior members of its various curriculum committees. (I myself became co-chair with DepEd Secretary Armin Luistro FSC of the Sub-Technical Working Group on Senior High School.) We were then able to ensure that DepEd would produce a K to 12 curriculum that would fulfill the CRS.

That is the way to understand the Academic Track of Grades 11 and 12. The Track is the product of collaboration between DepEd and CHED.

The Academic Track consists of four Strands: General Academic Strand; Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Strand; Accountancy, Business, and Management (ABM) Strand; and Humanities and Social Sciences (HumSS) Strand.

When a student opts for any of these Strands, s/he takes nine Specialization Subjects.

Remember that the 15 Core Subjects have the same competencies and the same content for all students, no matter what Track or Strand they choose. The seven Contextualized Subjects have the same competencies but different content for each Track and Strand. The Specialization Subjects have different competencies and different content.

In general, in the Academic Track, the Core Subjects take care of the CRS and the Strand Subjects prepare students for the particular college course that they plan to take. This is different from the other Tracks. In the other Tracks (Technical-Vocational-Livelihood, Sports, Arts & Design), the Strand subjects are really terminal subjects, in the sense that they are not preparations for future studies but are meant to give students the tools to immediately enter the workplace.

For example, students taking up Cookery in the Home Economics Strand of the TVL Track are not studying chemistry, agriculture, physics, zoology, or whatever else may prepare them to study cooking, but are already actually cooking; upon graduation from SHS, they can already be cooks in hotels and restaurants. In contrast, students taking up Basic Calculus in the STEM Strand are just preparing to study engineering; they are not yet engineers after finishing SHS.               (To be continued)