DepEd to pilot K-10 curriculum in 35 schs
By J.Lo
"Perusal of Vice President and Secretary of Education's entire speech, delivered at Peace Village on Sept. 11, 2023, would show that at no point did she allude to rallies as being reason for alleged drop in enrollment," Department of Education (DepEd) will commence next week pilot implementation of revised Grade 1 to 10 curriculum dubbed "MATATAG" in 35 schools across the country.
MATATAG stands for "Make the curriculum relevant to produce job-ready, Active and responsible citizens; TAke steps to accelerate the delivery of basic education services and provision facilities; TAke good care of learners by promoting learner well-being, inclusiveness learning, and positive learning environment; and Give support for teachers to teach better," according to DepEd.
On list released, DepEd said MATATAG Curriculum would be pilot-tested on Sep. 25,223 in schools in seven regions, including National Capital Region (NCR), Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), Ilocos, Cagayan Valley, Central Visayas, Soccsksargen and Caraga.
Participating schools in NCR are all located in Malabon City: Dampalit Integrated School, Santiago Syjuco Memorial School, Muzon Elementary School and Tinajeros National High School.
In CAR, designated schools are Calafug Elementary School in Apayao, Rizal Elementary School and Doña Aurora National High School in Baguio City and Lam-ayan Integrated School and Bineng National High School in Benguet.
Ilocos region's designated schools are all in La Union: Cabaruan Integrated School, Caba Central Elementary School, Acao Elementary School, Casacristo National High School and Don Rufino Olarte Memorial National High School.
In Cagayan Valley, pilot schools include Cauayan City, Isabela's North Central School and Isabela province's Villa Teresita Primary School, Lanna National High School and Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo National High School.
Central Visayas' pilot schools are Cebu's Tindog Integrated School, San Fernando North Central Elementary School, Tabogon Central Elementary School, Dumanjug National High School and Liloan National High School.
Soccsksargen's listed schools include Mlang Pilot Elementary School in North Cotabato and Sarangani's Lamlifew Integrated School, Alegria Central Elementary School, Malalag National High School-Upo Annex and Alegria National High School.
Finally, Caraga's pilot schools are Butuan's Baobaoan Integrated School and Pedro Duncano National High School, Surigao del Norte's Suyangan Elementary School and Socorro National High School, and Agusan del Norte's Santiago Central Elementary School.
Earlier, DepEd said schools were "meticulously" selected based on their enrollment size and community socioeconomic status, "to create a well-rounded pilot program reflects diversity and complexity of Philippine education landscape."
Benchmarked on "decongestion" of learning competencies, such as reducing subjects in early grade levels to focus on foundational skills such as oracy and numeracy, MATATAG Curriculum intends to improve students' learning outcomes and help them succeed.
After pilot tests this school year, new curriculum will be implemented in phases: first in preschool and Grades 1, 4 and 7 in all public and private schools starting SY 2024-2025; Grades 2, 5 and 8 in SY 2025-2026; Grades 3, 7 and 8 in SY 2026-2027 and Grade 10 in SY 2027-2028.
Mass training of teachers for full implementation will begin next year.
Procurement process of textbooks and other learning materials has also commenced.
Meanwhile, DepEd clarified Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte-Carpio had never blamed rallies as reason for two-million drop in enrollment for current school year.
DepEd was reacting to news story headlined "Sara blames rallies for 2-M drop in enrollment" last Thursday.
In statement posted on DepEd Philippines' Facebook page, it called headline "highly sensationalized, inaccurate and misleading."
"As matter of fact, simple reading of article itself would also reveal nothing was uttered by Vice President and Secretary of Education, be it verbatim or by insinuation, to even remotely support title's conclusion," it added.
News story quoted Duterte in her keynote speech delivered at opening of three-day Peace Village Exhibit at SM City Davao on Monday last week.
In her speech, Vice President slammed ACT Teachers party-list Rep. France Castro for supposedly questioning her over drop in enrollment figure.
"And then France Castro would say, 'Look, DepEd is short of two million in enrollment…ask Inday Sara where enrollment is,'" Duterte said.
DepEd emphasized distortion of facts for clickbait purposes should not be tolerated, as it demanded publications "make necessary changes immediately to avoid spreading false statements."
In statement issued earlier, Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) maintained nothing wrong with questioning DepEd over drop in enrollment.
"There's nothing wrong in questioning and holding DepEd accountable for two-million drop in enrollment… department's responsibility to ensure no student is left behind…why is Sara Duterte so allergic to questions… DepEd should look into root causes of education sector's problems that left students unable to go back to school this year, such as financial problems households face due to country's economic problems," ACT chairman Vladimer Quetua said.
DepEd said still premature to conclude there is about two-million drop in number of students enrolled for this school year, as it pointed out figure could still go up in coming days.
"For information of public, accurate determination as to whether enrollment numbers have dropped compared to figures from previous years cannot be made at this time…due to fact encoding of learners in our Learners Information System is still ongoing," DepEd said.
Third week of classes ended last Friday with 26.9 million officially enrolled students in elementary and high school, still below target of 28.8 million students for SY 2023 to 2024.
"DepEd will consistently provide public with regular updates on enrollment figures as they continue to increase, and announce total number of enrollees for SY 2023-2024 once the encoding period closes on Oct. 30, 2023," DepEd said.
DepEd reported total of 26,895,079 students enrolled in public and private kindergarten, elementary and high schools as well as in Philippine schools overseas and under Alternative Learning System (ALS).
Calabarzon tallied highest number of enrolled students with 3,909,872; followed by Central Luzon with 2,955,216, and the NCR with 2,777,408.
Also with high numbers of enrollees are Region VII with 2,079,140; Western Visayas with 1,996,231; Bicol with 1,703,645, and Davao region with 1,353,504.
Total of 330,216 students signed up under ALS while 18,466 enrolled in Philippine schools overseas.
DepEd earlier said schools would accept enrollees until end of this month.
Total of 28.4 million students were enrolled in public and private schools in SY 2022-2023.
Government should never delay release of performance-based bonuses (PBB) for teachers and support personnel, ACT said.
While Department of Budget and Management (DBM) said it had released P11.6 billion for 2021 PBBs of more than 920,000 public school teachers, ACT said DepEd should ensure timely submission of forms so that teachers and other personnel would never have to experience long delays.
"We demand we should never experience this longest delayed PBB… DepEd should ensure to pass forms on time… should learn from their mistakes…teachers and education workers deserve to be compensated on time," Quetua said in statement.
While teachers are expected to have their PBBs after two-year wait, education support personnel would be facing further delays due to issues require "revalidation," according to DBM.
It said it returned documents for support personnel PBBs due to "duplicate entries, incorrect information on months of service, and certain personnel not found in DepEd's Personnel Services Itemization and Plantilla of Personnel, among others."
"It is already September of 2023, yet PBB 2021 is still not released for education support personnel…delayed for a long time, and DepEd has not yet addressed discrepancies, not first time DepEd is implementing Performance-Based Bonus and yet they continue to fail to release this on time," Quetua said.
ACT also stated despite recent statement of DBM it had released P11.6 billion for 920,073 beneficiaries of PBB 2021, teachers are still disappointed in DepEd's sluggish process of complying with needed requirements.
DepEd submitted necessary documents for evaluation to DBM from April to August this year.
PBB is top-up incentive given to government employees based on their performance and contributions to accomplishing their department's overall targets and commitments.
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