Is Public Education Ready for an Overhaul? SUBMITTED BY: Ferlyn S. Paraunda COURSE/YEAR/SECTION: BSA 1-4 Is Public Education Ready for an Overhaul? Change is coming according to President Rodrigo Duterte but does the public education in our country ready for this change? The Philippines' educational system has been heavily influenced by the country's colonial history. There have been periods of Spanish, American, and Japanese rule and occupation in that history. During the America’s occupation in the country English was introduced as the major medium of instruction at this time, and the first public education system was founded, modeled after the United States school system and controlled by the newly founded Department of Instruction (Education in Philippines, n.d.). Public education is an education that is open for all and it is free because it is funded by the government. Currently our country’s education has been greatly hit by the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus as a result, our education shifted from face-toface classes to distance learning. Also one of the major changes in our curriculum is the implementation of K-12 program. Before, the basic education consists of 6 years of elementary education and 4 years of high school education and now that the K-12 program was implemented our basic education consists of 1 year of Kindergarten, 6 years of elementary, 4 years of junior high school, and 2 years of senior high school. After declaring the outline for the new curriculum, a serious debate took place about whether we are ready for this initiative or not. This paper disagree that the public education in the Philippines is ready for an overhaul. First Counterclaim is that the public education is ready to shift from face to face classes to distance learning. Distance learning is define as the children learning away from schools but connected to teachers either online, through some form of social media app, or through learning packets delivered to learners and used for remote learning. The Department of Education assured legislators and the public that the government was prepared for the start of classes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers have been coached on creative teaching tactics, internet connectivity has been increased, and modules have been prepared for distribution, according to the report (Palatino, 2020). Second counterclaim is that we are ready to shift from 10 years in basic education to 12 years of education. President Benigno Aquino of the Philippines signed a basic education curriculum into law in May, which would add a required kindergarten year and two more senior high school years to what was formerly a 10-year education program, making basic education 12 years long. The K-12 Basic Education Program strives to provide every Filipino child with the education necessary to compete in the global context. With the new 12-year curriculum in place, future Filipino students will be better equipped to enroll in undergraduate programs at foreign universities. (Philippines creates opportunities in overhaul of K-12 education system, 2013). To accommodate the reforms, 86,478 classrooms were constructed, and over 128,000 new teachers hired in the Philippines between 2010 and 2015 alone (Macha, et al., 2018) Shifting to distance learning proved that the public education is not ready for this change because we have slow internet connection, lack of training for the teachers and lack of funds in producing modules. It also brings negative effects to the students because many of them does not have a stable internet connection and enough money to support their need for internet connection to attend their online classes and according to an Ookla Speedtest conducted in August 2020, the Philippines placed towards the bottom of the world rankings in terms of average broadband and mobile speeds. With mobile download speeds of 16.44Mbps, the country ranked 199th out of 139 countries. With a broadband speed of 25.34Mbps, we ranked 106th out of 174 countries (Moneymax, 2020), as a result, a lot of them are having difficulties in understanding their lessons because they cannot attend the virtual meeting with their teachers. Due to the lack of interaction in online class, students are more likely to be distracted by smartphones, pets, deliveries, and other things other than the ongoing online class. It also brought difficulties not just to the students but also for teachers because there are some teachers that does not have enough knowledge to used different applications that are used in online class setup. There are also a lot of problems that arise in terms of modules because some instructions on the activities are not clear so the students even the parents did not know what they will do on it and another is that the images depicted on it is not clear and are not printed with color so the students cannot identify what it is. The government was not prepared to implement a 12-year Basic Education Cycle mandated by K to 12, as evidenced by the actual lack of classrooms, libraries, toilets, and other facilities; textbooks, modules, and other instructional materials; teachers, non-teaching staff, maintenance staff, and other education sector personnel (Llego, n.d.). This proved that our public education is not ready for this major overhaul in our curriculum because even before the K-12 program was implemented these are the same problem encountered by the old curriculum. The negative impacts brought by the K-12 education has certainly resulted in decrease on higher education enrollment. Commission on Higher Education (CHED) shows that undergraduate enrollments dropped by 12.7 percent between the 2015/16 and 2016/17 academic years, and is expected to drop by a further 22 percent in 2017/18. Because of the additional two more years to the basic education a lot of students stopped and choose to work to help support their family and because of financial problems their parents cannot support them in college. To understand why such new policies may not work out properly and why we are not ready for these changes, this paper point out three major factors. The first one is because of poor internet quality and expensive internet connection. In this time of pandemic wherein online class becomes the new normal has proved how slow and very costly the internet connection that we have in our country. Fast internet connection is very important to us students especially when we are having a virtual discussion so that the voice of the teacher will be clear and the presentation will be smooth and continuous. The cost of the internet connection connection is also a problem especially to poor and average families that only have enough money for their foods and other necessities and because of lack of money, they failed to attend their online classes. Through the joint study by the World Bank and the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) revealed that 57 percent of Filipino households, or 12.2 million families, are still without Internet connection, and those who do have it complain about sluggish download rates. The country's average mobile broadband download speed is only 16.76 megabytes per second (mbps), below from the global average of 32.01 mbps. Its average download speed for 3G/4G mobile devices is 7 mbps, which is slower than the ASEAN average of 13.26 mbps. In terms of pricing, a fixed broadband service in the Philippines is comparable to equivalent plans in Singapore and Thailand, the two nations in the region with the fastest speeds. A 500 megabyte Internet service for prepaid, handset-based mobile broadband costs $6.3 a month in the Philippines, the fourth highest in ASEAN behind Singapore, Brunei, and Malaysia (Leyco, 2020). Second point of this paper is the lack of funds from the government to the education sector. It is the role of the government to provide support and enough funds to education sector because in this institution, the students are shaped to be a better and equipped citizen but the government did not pay attention on it. It seems that they are covering their ears on the cries of the Filipino students that are struggling to survive in this time of pandemic and experiencing a large adjustments on the changes brought by the distance learning. And because of lack of funds, public schools are lacking of buildings, teachers, classrooms and armchairs for a large number of students. Just like what happened when the K-12 was implemented, many public high schools are not prepared on it , as a result, some rooms that are used by the junior high schools are used for the senior high schools students, and it resulted in congestion of the students in one room. Because there is also scarcity of armchairs for the students some of them are sitting on the floor or on a broken chairs. DepEd has received P606.5 billion from the government's projected P4.5 trillion budget for 2021. While the education sector would receive the lion's share of funds, numerous organizations argue that the amount is insufficient to meet the education sector's needs for the overhauled education system. Because there aren't enough funds to reproduce learning materials, the Department of Education (DepEd) announced that pupils may have to share learning modules for the third and fourth quarter of the current school year (Magsambol, 2020). The third point of this paper is the current state of our country which affected all sectors especially the education sector so it is really difficult for an overhaul to take place. Because of the pandemic the education’s increasing progress has stopped and brought back to its knees. It caused a huge change in our education that brought the distance learning, modular learning and blended learning that are very new to us. Because of this new system all of us are adjusting and hoping that this pandemic will end and we can go back to face-to-face classes because I think in this traditional way, the learning process is more effective because there is an interaction between the students and teacher and the students are more focused on the class because there are less distractions in the classrooms. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused havoc on education systems around the world, affecting approximately 1.6 billion students in over 200 nations. More than 94 percent of the world's student population has been affected by school, institution, and other learning facility closures (Pokhrel, 2021). New system in our education like distance learning were unsustainable in some cases, and several universities were forced to suspend remote or online classes as a result of students' financial position affecting their access to these modes of learning. Concerns about the mental health of students and teachers affected by the uncertainty were also a factor in the decision to halt online sessions (Simbulan, 2020). I disagree that our public education is ready for an overhaul because of some points that this paper had discussed like slow and expensive internet connection, lack of funds from the government and lastly because of the current state of our country brought by the pandemic. I highly suggest that we should not jump into new changes in our education system and to focus more on the problems of our current curriculum. The public education system that we have right now is very new to us so we should adapt to these changes even though it is very difficult for all of us. For the first point that I have discussed I suggest that the internet providers should make their services better and affordable so that the great demands for fast and affordable internet connection of the Filipino students will be met. For my second argument, I recommend to the government that they should allocate more funds to the education sector and to provide the needs of the students even though they are focused on fighting the COVID-19, they should not forget that students are the future of our nation and we deserve to get a quality education to be a globally competitive citizen. For the third point, I suggest that the government should implement mass testing and continuous vaccination roll-out to combat the COVID-19 virus so that this pandemic will end and the students can finally go back to the traditional way of education and little by little our education sector can recover from the destruction brought by the pandemic. References: ICEF monitor. (2013). Philippines creates opportunities in overhaul of K-12 education system. https://monitor.icef.com/2013/08/philippines- creates-opportunities-in-overhaul-of-k-12-education-system/ Leyco, C. (2020). Filipinos pay more for slow Internet services – World Bank https://mb.com.ph/2020/10/06/filipinos-pay-more-for-slow-internet-servicesworld-bank/ Llego, M. A. (2020). 10 Reasons Why the K to 12 Program Should Be Suspended. https://www.teacherph.com/10-reasons-why-the-k-to-12- program-should-be-suspended/ Macha, W., Mackie, C., Magaziner, J. (2018). Education in the Philippines. https://wenr.wes.org/2018/03/education-in-the-philippines Magsambol, B. (2020). Teachers seek bigger education budget in 2021 amid pandemic. https://www.rappler.com/nation/teachers-seek-bigger-2021education-budget-coronavirus-pandemic MoneyMax.ph. (2020). Internet in the Philippines: Why Is It Slow and Expensive?. https://sg.news.yahoo.com/cost-internet-asean-3-region220022441.html Palatino, M. (2020). Are Schools in the Philippines Ready to Open in a Pandemic?. https://thediplomat.com/2020/08/are-schools-in-the- philippines-ready-to-open-in-a-pandemic/ Pokhrel, S. & Chhetri, R. (2021). A Literature Review on Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Teaching and Learning. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2347631120983481#:~:t ext=The%20COVID%2D19%20pandemic%20has,of%20the%20world' s%20student%20population. Simbulan, N. (2020). The Philippines – COVID-19 and Its Impact on Higher Education in the Philippines. https://headfoundation.org/2020/06/04/covid-19-and-its-impact-onhigher-education-in-the-philippines/ Study Country.com. (n.d.). Education in Philippines. https://www.studycountry.com/guide/PHeducation.htm#:~:text=Education%20in%20the%20Philippines%20is,l eading%20to%20a%20bachelor's%20degree.
