MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) has expressed its interest in the review of the K-12 program’s effectiveness, Chairman Prospero de Vera said Wednesday.
“CHEd has already indicated its interest in the need to review the K-12 program. There’s already enough time to do a review,” he said when asked about his stance on the push to abolish the system. “The K-12 was implemented right before the Duterte administration took over, so we have the benefit of several years already. Data is available. Evaluation can be done. We can already look into a lot of things in K-12.”
De Vera added, “We have to see the data on the ground, and we have to match it with the policy objectives of the law and only then can we make a decision on the status of things.”
According to him, the K-12 program in the Philippines is different because it aims to produce both employable and university-ready graduates in a span of two years.
“The objective of K-12 is really to prepare students for university education so when they get to the university, dapat major subjects na kinukuha nila (they should be taking major subjects already). Pero ang K-12 natin (But our K-12 program) is unique because it has another purpose: employability. The expectation is after K-12, you can actually join the workforce already and earn a living. Now we have to find out, are those two objectives complementary? Or are those two objectives contradictory?” De Vera said.
The CHEd official further questioned, “Are we producing students who may not be as ready for university education? Or are we producing K-12 graduates that the industry is hesitant to employ? So we’ll have to study that in the evaluation of K-12.”
Talks on maintaining or abolishing the K-12 education system have been amplified again as a new administration assumes office by the end of June.
Vice President-elect Sara Duterte, who was also designated to lead the Department of Education, earlier said this issue “cannot be decided overnight.”
She bared, however, that President-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has already given the directive to review the program’s implementation.
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