The Department of Education is planning to roll out the updated Kinder to Grade 10 (K-10) curriculum by school year (SY) 2024-2025, DepEd spokesperson Michael Poa said Friday.
In an interview, Poa said the target rollout date is consistent with DepEd’s commitment to gather all public comments in order to fine-tune the K-10 curriculum before its implementation.
“Of course, what we really like to happen is to get all the comments so we can consider and further tweak the K-10 curriculum,” he said, noting that the posted curriculum guide on the DepEd website is just a draft.
He said that in reference to the guide, the mother tongue shall still be used as a “medium of instruction.”
“It’s still a working draft, that’s why we want to get the comments. According to our curriculum guide, and we would like to clarify this, we did not remove the mother tongue as a medium of instruction. What we removed was mother tongue as a subject,” Poa said.
Currently, the DepEd’s curriculum strand is still in the process of collating all comments to help finalize the revised curriculum.
The DepEd also assured that once finished, the draft of the updated curriculum guide for Grades 11 and 12 or Senior High School (SHS) shall also be released for transparency.
“Again, we are still in the consultation process, and then after that, we will first have the review proper, then the revision,” Poa said.
Last November, the DepEd started the curriculum review for SHS to adhere to the administration’s goal to ensure employable graduates.
DepEd earlier created a national task force to review the implementation of the senior high school program for one year to identify ways to improve the job prospects of SHS graduates.
Based on its own tracer study, DepEd found out that only one out of ten SHS graduates were employed while around eight out of ten went to college.
A study by the Philippine Business for Education also showed that out of the 70 leading companies across all sectors in the country, only 20 percent were willing to accept SHS graduates.
“As the nation strives for economic recovery and growth, it is becoming increasingly important for SHS graduates to have greater access to employment, entrepreneurship, advanced education, and training,” read the memorandum signed by DepEd Undersecretary Gina Gonong.
The task force was given until May 12, 2024 to submit its report.
Earlier, former President and Deputy Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo filed a House bill reverting the current K-to-12 program to “K+10+2,” essentially returning high school back to four years.
Under the measure, Grades 11 and 12 will be converted into a pre-university education type of learning system mandatory only for those proceeding to college.
