Cayetano raises questions on Deped’s K+12 program

Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano has expressed serious reservations about the Enhanced Basic Education Program (K+12) sought under Senate Bill 3286 that Sen. Edgardo Angara has authored.

“The question is: would we rather have just grade 1- 6 and years 1- 4 for high school with all facilities complete or two more years with inadequate facilities?” he asked.

The fundamental requisites of quality education must be initially provided rather than spending budget on the proposed two additional years in secondary education, Cayetano said.

As of 2010, the country has a shortage of 148,827 teachers, 66,800 classrooms, 135,847 toilets, 2.5 million seats, and 60 million books.

At present, only 29,261 of teaching positions have been filled, only 23,646 classrooms built, 29,243 toilets provided, 1.3 million seats produced, and 52.7 million books delivered.

Under the proposed 2013 budget, the Department of Education will remain as the agency with the highest budget allocation.

Its budget will increase by 22.6 percent to P292.7 billion, from P238.8 billion this year.

Sen. Franklin Drilon, Senate fi - nance committee chairman, said a P54- billion increase in funding will help address shortages in education resources like classrooms, teachers and textbooks.

It will also support the department’s K+ 12 program, he added.

However, Cayetano said with a 10- year program, ordinary families are already having a hard time bridging their children toward graduation.

“Adding two more years would further add to this burden and could trigger an increase in the number of dropouts,” he said.

Cayetano expressed his concern over the possible decrease in graduates upon K+12’s implementation.

He cited statistics showing that 36 percent of students drop out of elementary while only 44 percent graduate from high school.

“While I’m not closing the doors to its approval, I’m asking the DepEd to keep an open mind and see if they can reconfigure that their objectives will still be met while not fixating on the 6-42 model,” he said.

Graduating at the age of 19 instead of 17 not only incurs additional cost but may also lead to higher dropout rates, he added.

Cayetano said if one of the objectives of adding two years to our 10- year education system is to meet international standards then the government should also ensure that educational standards are met substantially.

“The 12-year cycle is the international standard,” he said. “But it’s not the only international standard.”

Cayetano said the international standard is to have 40 to 45 children in a classroom.

“In our country, we sometimes have up to 60 students in a room,” he said, pointing out that global standards also cover the minimum pay of teachers.

“But we only pay kindergarten teach- ers P3,000. It’s easy to say that this is the international standard without looking at the other factors.”