For millions of Filipinos, kindergarten and other preparatory courses before fir st grade used to give children with

financial means an early edge in academic ac hievements over their underprivileged peers. With the enactment of Republic Act 10533, kindergarten is now free for all Filipinos and required for entry to firs t grade. The next step is for authorities to ensure that poverty and other problems will not keep parents from sending their children to kindergarten and keeping them in school. The new law also makes the mother tongue the medium of instruction up t o third grade, with English being phased in at fourth grade. This should help di scourage pupils from dropping out due to language comprehension difficulties, al though the bigger reason for leaving school is poverty. While basic education is free and compulsory, studies show that the dropout rate remains high, starting in third grade and increasing in high school. Even if ed ucation is free, millions of families cannot afford even the daily transportatio n fare, food allowance and miscellaneous expenses for keeping a child in school. With two years added to secondary education, many students may fail to get a hi gh school diploma. Under RA 10533, students will be prepared to pursue either vocational courses, w hich offer quick employment opportunities, or regular college courses. The gover nment can fine-tune the program to reduce the current mismatch between skills an d job requirements in many local industries. A lot of time, effort and resources went into the development of the K to 12 pro gram, now embodied in RA 10533 or the Basic Education Program law. The measure i s meant to upgrade Philippine education, whose quality has deteriorated in recen t decades, and improve national competitiveness. Every effort must be made to en sure the success of its implementation.

I CANNOT understand why the Department of Education in its media releases about the K-12 bill exclusively harps on the end goal of adding a couple of years to b asic education. As I have always held, it is the NEW curriculum with mastery th ereof as its focus that makes K-12 a compelling necessity for our country. These changes in curricular content and focus emanate from the bill s intention to do away with the bilingual policy and to affirm mother tongue-based multilingua l education (MTB-MLE). The bill provides that for kindergarten and from Grades 1-3, the regional or native language of the learners shall be used for instructi on, teaching materials and testing. From Grades 4-6, there shall be a language transition plan so that Filipino and English are gradually introduced until thes e languages can become the primary modes of instruction in high school. The transition plan addresses a critical flaw in DepEd Order No. 16, which limit s L1 use up to Grade 3 only. Research has shown that short exit schemes lead to t he same disastrous academic results as complete immersion in a second language ( L2) that learners cannot speak. The other laudable provisions of the bill are: 1. The science subject will now be introduced in Grade 1, instead of in Grade 3. This subject will also be taught in the L1 of the learners, and not in English . In the past, some people had this silly notion that by integrating science in to the language subject, pupils will learn English. A legacy of the old bilingua l policy, this idea has been repeatedly disproven by the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study that found students had higher achievement when t he home language and language of testing were one and the same.

2. The basic curriculum shall be adapted locally to the language and culture of Filipino learners, including community values, to aid teachers in planning their lessons. This principle hews closely to DepEd s newly formulated policy framewor k for indigenous peoples which integrates indigenous knowledge systems and pract ices in all learning areas and processes. 3. The production and development of locally produced teaching materials shall b e encouraged and approval of these materials shall devolve to the regional and d ivision education units. Big books, primers and other teaching aids in the local languages are continuously being developed by teachers, but production is hampe red by the long and tedious process of evaluation and approval from imperial Man ila.

4. Finally, Filipino Sign Language (FSL) is now recognized as the learning mediu m in educating the deaf. This proposal actually reiterates a DepEd Special Educa tion (SPED) policy way back in 1997. If finally carried out in practice, this w ill make education in our country inclusive to a sizable community whose learnin g rights have long been trampled upon by the dominant hearing population. Meanwhile, there is another measure, sponsored by Rep. Antonio Tinio, which prop oses to declare FSL as the national language of the Filipino deaf and to mandate its use in schools, the courts, broadcast media, government offices and the wor kplace. To support the bill s passage and counteract proponents of Signing Exact English (SEE), the Philippine Federation of the Deaf is organizing a march-rally on Nov. 5 at 8:30 a.m. from the Philcoa area to the Batasan complex. In a letter to the House committee on social services, Education Secretary Armin Luistro stated that although DepEd was supportive of FSL, he was asking for two things: that FSL be clearly defined, and that the period of initial and full imp lementation of FSL in deaf education be delineated. He said most of the DepEd teachers of deaf children were trained using American Sign Language (ASL), and the period of transition would allow DepEd to retrain an d retool its teachers in FSL, revisit and reproduce its learning materials, and develop FSL curriculum according to each area or region. The DepEd stand has been denounced by the Philippine Deaf Resource Center (PDRC) as reflective of the serious blind-spot and attitudinal resistance afflicting t

he agency. The PDRC points out that FSL has been documented linguistically for a decade and that it is the decision-making bureaucrats that need to be retrained and retooled with the existing research on deaf education. The PDRC also sugges ts an affirmative action mechanism whereby deaf teacher education graduates can enter into the public school system without passing the LET. As Diane Dekker of SIL said, it takes time for teachers and administrators alike to imbibe a totally new approach to education, like MTB-MLE and FSL. Here is th e one major weakness of the K-12 program that critics have pointed out, and whic h I am in complete agreement with. DepEd should have factored in enough time for some kind of refinement process, say three years, before it can build enough ca pacity and resources to fully implement its flagship programs. The provision fo r such a period of preparation and the roadmap to get to where we are going shou ld have been expressly written into the K-12 bill. Ricardo Ma. Duran Nolasco, PhD (rnolasco_upmin@yahoo.com), is an associate profe ssor in linguistics at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/39978/k-12-mtb-mle-and-fsl-education-game -changers#ixzz2jvvIPaxl Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook We fully support the noble objectives of the K to 12 program. It is important fo r our graduates to be able to meet the requirements of the Washington Accord, Bo logna Accord, Sydney Accord and other forthcoming accords so that as professiona ls they will be accepted as co-equals of other professionals in the world. Howev er, it is as important at this time that we examine critically problems attendan t to the introduction of Grades 11 and 12 in school years 2016-2017 and 2017-201 8 and that we find the most economical solutions to these problems. The main problems pinpointed in various conferences are: 1. Billions of pesos will be needed for new buildings, equipment and supplies, a s well as for the hiring and training of additional teachers and staff for Grade s 11 and 12. Can we afford these? 2. Colleges and universities will have virtually no first-year students for both school years 2016-2018. These will bring tremendous financial problems to our p ublic and private (higher education institutions (HEIs). 3. There will be no college graduates for two school years (2020-2022) and no Te chnical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) graduates (at least a t the NC 2 level) for two school years (2016-2018). This will mean a substantial decrease in Tesda and collegiate graduates going overseas in those years and, t herefore, lesser OFW remittances for four years. Missed for two years, this woul d be disastrous; our credit rating could go down. Can we afford this? 4. Our absence for two years will force foreign employers to get their requireme nts from China, India, Vietnam, Thailand and others, which are all wanting to pu t in their own skilled workers. Again, this will be disastrous. Recommendations regarding these problems from various conferences have been sent to the Office of the President, the Department of Education, Commission on High er Education and Tesda, as follows: To minimize the expenditures in Problem 1, it is recommended that HEIs, public a nd private, be commissioned to handle the 11th and 12th years. If accepted, this

recommendation will give us three years to thresh out the details of this propo sal.

To minimize the impact of having no first-year students (Problem 2) during the t wo transition school years (2016-2018), we give Grade 10 graduates the option to take up CHEd and/or Tesda courses. This will solve Problems 3 and 4 as we will have graduates going abroad during the transition years. We will have to explain to the US and European Accords that this will only be during the transition yea rs. There are other problems related to the above problems and resolutions, but we a re hopeful these could be threshed out without much difficulty. We hope the policies of the DepEd and the Steering Committee will be finalized s oon to enable all those concerned to prepare for SY 2016-2018. MARCELO V. FERNANDEZ, president, Central Luzon Association of Higher Education Institutions Inc.; REYNATO C. ARIMBUYUTAN, president, Philippine Association of Higher Education and Technical Institutions Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/34920/how-to-cushion-k-to-12-transitionsimpact-on-economy#ixzz2jw7fOZLR Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook