More solutions to 2016

Last week, I started sharing some solutions to the problem facing Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in 2016, when Grade 11 kicks in.

Here are some more suggestions given to me by teachers. (In current English, this is “crowdsourced.”)

1. The K to 12 curriculum includes topics and even entire subjects that used to be taught only on the tertiary level. Among these are Calculus, Literary Theory, English/Filipino for Specific Purposes, Advanced Physics, Arts Appreciation, Applied Economics, Fundamentals of Accounting, Political Science, Sociology, and Philosophy. High school teachers are needed to teach these topics or subjects. College teachers now teaching General Education (GE) subjects under the old GE Curriculum (GEC) are in a good position to teach these topics and teachers.

College teachers who will find themselves with no students in 2016, then, can move to basic education and teach these topics or subjects. As long as they do not teach full-time in basic education, they do not need to pass the Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET). If they want to move completely to basic education, however, they will have to pass the LET, but they are given by law a grace period of five years after their date of hiring to do this. They can use the rest of 2014 and all of 2015 to take the necessary education subjects to qualify for the LET.

If the college teachers want to stay on the tertiary level, they can still teach what they are now teaching in the GEC. The students now majoring in Education need to be taught how to teach the GE topics and subjects now in K to 12. The college teachers can teach the Education majors. Because the demand for basic education teachers will mean that a lot more students will enroll in BSE, there should be no lack of students for the GE teachers to teach.

2. HEIs, particularly those that call themselves “universities” (“colleges” and “professional institutes” are the two other categories in the new typology being implemented by the Commission on Higher Education), are required to have significant research outputs. Administrators can use the enrollment gap that starts in 2016 to allow their teachers to do full-time research.

It is a truism among researchers that teachers that spend most of their time teaching will most likely not produce significant research. Significant research often needs blocks of time when a researcher does fieldwork, stays in a research library, and sits down to think. Those blocks of time cannot be had if a researcher has to go at least three times a week to a campus to teach undergraduates or even graduate students. Aside from this is the obvious difficulty of switching from the high-level thinking required in research to the low-level thinking required for classroom management.

If the HEI is serious about being labelled a university according to the new typology, it has to invest in research. The salaries and even the research expenses of teachers for the two years without first-year students will be well compensated by the future benefits that come with a university status in the new typology.

3. The K to 12 curriculum and the new GEC require a lot of new instructional materials. The Department of Education is currently making do with modules conceptualized, formulated, and finalized within a few months either by teachers or publishers. This is clearly not an ideal situation for learning and teaching.

Good instructional materials need time to be prepared. They not only have to be written and validated by experts, but they must also be tried out with pilot groups, opened to criticism by all stakeholders (yes, even by parents and employers), and benchmarked against global standards. That entire process will take two years with textbook writers working full-time. College teachers without any students during the enrolment gap are in a perfect position to do instructional materials.

Administrators can continue to pay their teachers not for teaching but for working full-time on instructional materials. From a financial point of view, this should be viewed as an investment. If the HEI has an Intellectual Property Policy (which it is supposed to have, anyway), part of the income from the instructional materials when they are published can revert to the HEI. With proper planning, the two-year investment can be recouped in the long term.

4. Overload full-timers now. Some teachers say that they are willing to teach overloads this academic year and next, without pay. What the HEI would have paid them can then be paid only during the enrolment gap.

For example, a teacher can teach up to 30 college units per semester today, way above the usual 12 to 24 units. S/he can even teach overload during summer. The overload units will not be paid yet by the HEI. They will be paid in AY 2016-17 and AY 2017-18, when they will have reduced or even no load. (Administrators will have to worry about non-teaching staff; this suggestion comes from teaching staff.)

I am happy that some teachers are willing to share the burden of administrators by joining this Teach Now, Be Paid Later scheme. (Next week: Even more solutions)