Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto on Tuesday stressed the problem of K to 12 program was not legal but logistical as he called for an end to backlog in facilities.
He called on the government to address the backlogs in the delivery of school facilities upon which the success of the said education reform hinged.
He issued the statement following the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the constitutionality of Republic Act 10533 or the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013, which expanded to 13 years the length of basic education in the country.
The K to 12 program, Recto said, has not been hindered by legal challenges but by delays in the delivery of classrooms, equipment and the hiring of teachers whose numbers have to be increased commensurate to the addition of two years of senior high school in the education curriculum.
However, the Senate leader commended the current DepEd leadership, led by Leonor Magtolis Briones, “for reducing the huge backlog they had inherited. They have had to do a lot of catching up and are successful in this.”
He said K to 12’s premise was that classrooms, teachers and equipment would already be in place to receive enrollees in the additional grade levels.
“That should have been the precondition. But the delivery of facilities was behind the curve,” he said.
As of July this year, there were 81,630 classrooms, funded in previous years, which were still in various stages of construction. This is on top of the 47,000 units to be built this year.
Teacher recruitment was also hit by delays, Recto said.
Of the 188,078 teacher items created from April 2016 to August 2018, only 114,019 teachers were hired from July 2016 to June 2018. This year the target is to hire 81,100 teachers.
Another key education facility which suffered a procurement setback were technical-vocational packages, Recto said. Some 4,600 “tech-voc” packages were targeted for delivery this year, “which, even if they will materialize, form a small part of a very big requirement,” he added.
“We should remember that K to 12’s promise was the graduation of employable high school graduates, many in the tech-voc field, but the absence of teachers and equipment betrayed this promise,” he said.
