K to 12 — a bold program meant to align the Philippines with the global 12-year basic education cycle — are not going away with the usual problems encountered at the beginning of each school year.
The program mandating Filipino pupils to attend kindergarten, six years of elementary school education, four years of junior high school and two years of senior high school. The signing officially ended the country’s 10-year basic education cycle.
New learning materials under the revised curriculum for Grade 2 and Grade 8 ( formerly second year high school) were delivered, as in last year when K to 12 program was rolled out. As in the previous year, teachers had a five-day mass training just before the of classes.
Still, this second year of the program’s implementation should be better as the DepEd gains experience. This is a lot better than last year. The training was better-planned. There was even a chief trainers’ training before the trainers’ training. Maybe they learned from the experience last time.
It’s not generally understood and quite hard to explain that the K to 12 is a curriculum reform that involves changes in textbooks, changes in classrooms, retooling of teachers, etc. Even if there is no K to 12, we have to address the backlog in classrooms, toilets, teachers, etc.
In any undertaking the first year of implementation is faced with a lot of glitches and challenges, we made (the curriculum change) gradually, so we will improve as we move along the full implementation. This year will not be as problematic as last year.
A major change this year was the decision to tap the DepEd’s own experts in the field and in the main office to develop and train the teachers for the new curriculum.
The department previously sought the help of mostly university educators as subject area convenors to develop the teachers’ and learners’ materials.
There is a very big change (in the new curriculum). Now, the focus is to teach for understanding, not for facts or low level information.
By: ROWENA S. CUEVA