In provinces, confusion marks school start

As the new school year opened on Monday, changes in the curriculum brought about by the Department of Education’s (DepEd) K to 12 (kindergarten to Grade 12) basic education cycle have been met both with doubt and optimism by parents in several parts of the country, teachers and school officials said.

A potential source of problem, they said, is the use of the local language or “mother tongue” as a medium of instruction.

In Mindanao, Ma. Socorro Bustamante, a teacher at Zamboanga City High School, said most parents are “still trying to adjust” to the Grade 7 level. “They are confused at this time,” she said.

The same confusion happened at Davao City National High School, the largest public secondary school in that city.

Norma Ambolo, a Grade 7 class adviser, said the implementation of the K to 12 program is a step in the right direction, but acknowledged that many parents and students are still confused and doubtful.

“I saw it in their faces. They were confused,” she said.

In Sarangani province, Beth Farnazo, in charge of the Schools of Living Tradition, said students and parents welcomed this year’s implementation of the K to 12 program.

Ninie del Rosario, the manager and coordinator for Southern Mindanao of the DepEd’s Institute for Indigenous Peoples’ Education, which designs curriculum relevant to indigenous peoples, said she expects lumad children to easily cope with the new program.

Del Rosario said more lumad children would want to go to school because they now would be taught in their mother tongue.

The K to 12 program will also be implemented in madaris (plural of madrasah) in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). But Alzad Sattar, the undersecretary for ARMM’s madaris education program, said they still have not received the K to 12 program manual for its implementation.

In Pangasinan, translating lesson plans from English to Pangasinan is proving to be difficult for teachers, said Reynardo Barrozo, the principal of West Central Elementary School in Dagupan City.

While the teachers are Pangasinenses, they find it difficult to translate words from English to the vernacular, especially technical terms in math and science, he said.

He said many children in the province now speak Filipino, which could create another problem when teachers use the vernacular.

Barrozo said teaching students in their native tongue may be advantageous in the long run. “When elementary students were taught in their primary language, sometime in the 1960s, there were no nonreaders,” he said.

In Baguio City, a brief debate on whether the Cordillera’s mother tongue should be Ilocano or the upland dialects marred an otherwise smooth school opening for the region, said Dr. Ellen Donato, the DepEd Cordillera director.

“We are investigating an observation that some teachers have been using the dialect instead of Ilocano or Filipino,” she said.

In Nueva Ecija, a special class for kindergarten was opened at Muñoz Central School in the Science City of Muñoz after school officials discovered that at least 40 pupils enrolled in Grade 1 did not finish kindergarten, a requirement of the K to 12 program.

Virgilio Domingo, the school principal, said pupils would be trained under the new curriculum for kindergarten during the first half of the school year before they are allowed to join Grade 1.

In Bulacan, at least 10 villages in the coastal town of Hagonoy are submerged in at least 2 feet of floodwater that has been aggravated by the high tide.

Dr. Alma Ruby Torio, the city schools division superintendent in Dagupan, said at least three schools in Dagupan City have flooded classrooms.

In Bicol, Jose Bonto, the DepEd administrative officer in the region, said more children enrolled in public schools this year probably because of higher tuition in private schools.

In Calapan City, Nicanor Alcañices, the principal of Adriatico Memorial School, said the new curriculum would be more effective because it motivates students to participate in class by making them use their mother tongue, which is Tagalog in Calapan. Reports from Julie Alipala, Karlos Manlupig, Germelina Lacorte and Aquiles Zonio, Inquirer Mindanao; Gabriel Cardinoza, Yolanda Sotelo, Villamor Visaya Jr. and Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon; Anselmo Roque and Carmela Reyes-Estrope, Inquirer Central Luzon; and Mar Arguelles, Juan Escandor Jr., Madonna Virola, Maricar Cinco and Romulo Ponte, Inquirer Southern Luzon