We used to be one of two countries in the world that could achieve in ten years of basic education what other countries needed twelve for. But then, foreign employers started discriminating against our overseas contract professionals not because of sub-standard performance in such as engineering, nursing or accounting, but because their basic education lacked two years.
K-12 Reform
So, in 2013 the Philippine educational system bowed to the pressure in foreign countries by passing the Enhanced Basic Education Act – or the K-12 Law (RA 10533). It required Kindergarten before the six grades of elementary education we already had. Then, after the original four years of high school, it added two years of Senior High School (SHS). The original four years it called Junior High School.
Those who were not convinced about the necessity of two more years of elementary education were told that we had really needed to decongest our elementary education curriculum. Elementary pupils could learn better with less pressure and less curriculum clutter. So overcrammed learning material in basic education was pushed upwards into senior high school. Meanwhile, college educators, looking at their overcrammed teaching loads, began pushing material down into SHS. The result was a very demanding SHS – which, beyond academics, was also to nurture a culture that was no longer high-schoolish but "pre-adult" because it was pre-college.
Originally, as SHS was introduced by DepEd Sec. Bro. Armin Luistro, basic education was supposed to have two major exits: first, the world of work – including the Technical-Vocational-Livelihood Track, the Sports Track, and the Arts and Design Track – and second, the world of higher education through the pre-college Academic Track. The insight was simple: not everyone needed a college degree, and those who didn't need this, didn't need to be saddled by learning requirements necessary only for college. Those, however, who needed a college degree could prepare for it well through four strands: Accountancy, Business and Management (ABM), Humanities and Social Sciences (HUMSS), Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), and for those still discerning their professional options for their future, the General Academic Strand (GAS).
Unfortunately, in the implementation of the K-12 program, overscrupulous DepEd officials[1] demanded that all K-12 students be fundamentally college ready. The added academic burden meant that learners wanting to enter the work force after SHS did not have the time to develop the skills demanded by industry employers; it also meant that many students who graduated from SHS were also not college ready. But, going with the flow, they entered college anyway. Engineering professors saw their SHS graduates from the STEM strand could not handle the required higher mathematics, and natural science professors saw that their SHS graduates could not handle the physics or chemistry.
This did not mean SHS was a waste of time. SHS graduates were more mature in college, more participative, more communicative, more adult than in the past. But in fact they were not all college ready academically. Many struggled through the SHS college preparation they did not want nor need. And when they entered the college they originally did not want, they struggled more.
MATATAG Curriculum: a Corrective?
Recently DepEd initiated a reform of the curriculum of elementary education and called it the Matatag (i.e., the sound, secure) Curriculum. It was supposed to strengthen foundational skills, enhance curriculum relevance, promote learner well-being, ensure gradual learning progression, cater to the diverse needs of learners, support teachers, and improve learning resources. Among the means to these ends was a reduction in required learning competencies. Again, the idea of decongesting the over-congested curriculum re-surfaced. [2]
Interestingly, while the systematically-presented first year report of the Second Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) of the Philippine Congress had serious things to say about basic education, e.g., that it operates at approximately 58% efficiency, and that in the National Achievement Test for Grade 6 (in SY 2021-22) it performed with low proficiency in Mathematics (41%), English (44%), Araling Panlipunan (44%), and Science (44%).[3] But EDCOM 2 had nothing specific to say about Senior High School – how these two years added to basic education had been successful or non-successful, a boon or a bane. Considering the general basic education data, however, one would surmise that especially for pre-college learners, roughly 80% of the SHS population, raising the proficiency of SHS learners in mathematics, English, the social sciences and the natural sciences would be the obvious priorities in reform. This is especially if the goal of the K-12 program is "that every graduate of basic education shall be an empowered individual who has learned, through a program that is rooted on sound educational principles and geared towards excellence, the foundations for learning throughout life, the competence to engage in work and be productive, the ability to coexist in fruitful harmony with local and global communities, the capability to engage in autonomous, creative, and critical thinking, and the capacity and willingness to transform others and one's self" (RA 10533, Sec 2).
It may be noticed that the possibility of a graduate of basic education entering the work force whether immediately after SHS or after college, is only a small component of the true goal of the K-12 reform.
The JMC Embedding TVET Learning Outcomes in All SHS Tracks
It is in this context that experienced administrators of basic education and especially of Senior High School are viewing the recent Joint Memorandum Circular (Series of 2024) issued by the Department of Education, the Department Labor and Employment, the Commission on Higher Education, and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, entitled "Strengthening Senior High School Curriculum and Delivery by embedding TVET [Technical and Vocational Education Training] in Senior High School Tracks Towards Workforce Readiness and Employability" [I will refer to this document in this article as "JMC"] with grave concern, if not horror.
It was subject of a Stakeholder's Consultation last Sept. 5, 2024 at the TESDA-DAIKIN Training Center in Taguig.[4]
In its whereases of JMC rote obeisance is rendered to Art. XIV, Sec. 2 (1) of the 1987 Constitution of the Philippines provides that "the State shall establish, maintain, and support a complete, adequate, and integrated system of education relative to the needs of the people and society", but educational policy makers appear to be engaged in piecemeal rather than systemic reforms. Indeed, the EDCOM 2 had shown that "the educational system in the Philippines struggles to meet the criteria of a system." To our national shame, it entitled its study after its first year of operation, "MISEDUCATION, The Failed System of Philippine Education."
Through this JMC, with the abstract [meaning, non-systemic, system adverse] goal of increasing work force readiness and employability, it will contribute to the systemic miseducation in the Philippines by burdening all Senior High School Tracks and many of their subjects with mandatory TVET learning outcomes – regardless of whether the learner ambitions to be an welder, a seafarer, a chef, a medical doctor, a geophysicist, a chemist, a robotics engineer, a philosopher or a quantum physicist. The dismal performance that EDCOM 2 reports for basic education in mathematics, English, the social sciences and the natural sciences urges the that the national effort towards systemic basic education improvement should be here, and not in making all basic education completers more ready for the workforce.
If yesterday the K-12 reform was systemically skewed towards college, today it is being systemically skewed towards workforce and employability readiness.
Of course, the JMC acknowledges that most – some 80% - of the Basic Education completers will go to college and acknowledges further that TVET learning outcomes in senior high school can be of benefit for a learner ambitioning to become a doctor or an astrogeophysicist, but there is no systemic appreciation of the costs of these eventually mandatory outcomes in the time management constraints of the SHS teachers and learners.
There also appears to be no genuine appreciation of the burdens the JMC is imposing on the SHS teacher in needing to train to incorporate and assess TVET learning outcomes in all tracks and many subjects of SHS. This is not a burden than can be achieved in one or two sessions of in-service training; it would have to carried by schools of education in their training of teachers.
The references to the ASEAN Quality Reference Framework and the Philippine Qualifications Framework do not necessarily support TVET embedment in SHS, if such embedment will make pre-college preparation less efficient in such as Mathematics, Languages, the Natural and Social Sciences because pre-college students will be forced to use their limited time and energy to pursue TVET certification. In the eight levels of qualifications established by law in the Philippines (through RA 10968), Levels 6, 7 and 8 have to do with higher education learnings and skills for which Levels 2, 3, and 4 dealing with practical skills and knowledge, more specialized technical vocational skills, and advanced technical and vocational skills are not required.[5] Indeed, considering the history of over-congestion in the senior high school, from a systemic viewpoint, TVET should not be embedded in all SHS tracks.
Finally, the JMC fails to appreciate that of 4.18 million learners enrolled in 12,600 public, private and LGU SHSs throughout the country, there is no regularly-updated assessment of the real ability of industry on the local level to absorb through employment consistent with Philippine laws the work-force ready-graduates of SHS. Is there a genuine readiness of employers, public and private, to absorb some 850,00 SHS graduates spread over rural and urban areas annually? For in employment in the Philippines, there seems to be an inordinate preference for college graduates, even for salespersons and cashiers.
Indeed, with its large contingent of overseas contract workers, the Philippines is notoriously not a manufacturing country which requires higher-level TVET training for properly-remunerated manufacturing jobs. Instead of manufacturing, the Philippines' economic elites are content to invest lucratively in the retail trade (like the Sys of SM) and real estate and construction (like the Ayalas of Ayala Corp).[6]
Ripe for Review and Reconsideration
This JMC signed on May 10, 2024 in Metro by CHED Chair Prospero de Vera III, TESDA Secretary General Suharto Mangudadatu, DOLE Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma, and Sara Duterte, Secretary of Education, is already due for review and reconsideration – especially in the context of the new Director General of TESDA, Francisco Benitez, and the new DepEd Secretary, Sonny Angara. Hopefully this review and reconsideration could benefit from the rich experiences of SHS practitioners – especially where SHSs have credibly contributed to the success of the Enhanced Basic Education Program. Indeed, as many of these have been private, perhaps the government which has presided admittedly over systemic miseducation in the Philippines ought be less sanguine about prescribing reform for successful private SHSs. EDCOM 2's spirit of improving the system of Philippine Education, and not just intervening in a part, discarding ramifications on the whole, should guide this process.
There is nothing wrong with strengthening the SHS Technical-Vocational-Livelihood Track for those learners who really ambition to join the work force after SHS. TESDA Certification (NC2) of achievement within this track was subject to another JMC signed by Mangudadatu and Duterte earlier this year. But now to force TVET learning outcomes on all SHS who are involved in serious SHS preparation for PQF Levels 6,7, 8 qualifications is inane.
[1] Famously led by Dr. Dina Ocampo, Usec. for Curriculum under DepEd Sec. Armin Luistro.
[2] Cf. https://www.deped.gov.ph/matatag-curriculum/
[3] Cf. https://edcom2.gov.ph/media/2024/02/EDCOM-II-Year-One-Report-PDF-022924.pdf
[4] I am very grateful to Dr. Gina Montalan, VP for Basic Education of the ADDU University for sharing her slides from this consultation and her immediate reflections on the JMC. They are shared in this blog with her permission.
[5] Content on the ASEAN Quality Reference Framework (AQRF) and the Philippines Qualifications Framework formulated with the assistance of AI through CHAT GPT.
[6] Cf. "Lost Advantage" on lost educational advantages in Chapter 11, and "Happy Families of Conglomerate Capitalism" on the lack of manufacturing in the Philippines in Chapter 16 of Philip Bowring's, The Making of the Modern Philippines: Pieces of a Jigsaw State (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024).
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