Noynoy on adding years

Responding to my column of Jan. 7, the Liberal Party wrote me a long letter clarifying its stand on the addition of two years to our education cycle. Instead of reprinting the entire letter (which will take several columns), I will quote what I consider the most important parts of the letter and comment on them. If I misinterpret the LP stand, I am open to being corrected. Because what I wrote was meant to differentiate the presidential candidates from each other, I will refer to the LP stand as the stand of Noynoy Aquino.

Noynoy says: “The Philippines has the shortest education cycle preparatory to university. Ours is 10 years; the rest of the world is 12. In short, we have a curriculum that, on paper, covers the same subject matter as the rest of the world but which we cram into 10, instead of 12, years. This means that our teachers take all kinds of short cuts to try to cover the material or just simply do not attempt to cover the entire syllabus in a given year for lack of material time. This shortchanges our children’s education.”

I agree completely. In fact, the whole world agrees. Our engineers, for example, have been rejected again and again by the Washington Accord because of our short basic education cycle. Our high school students consistently fail international tests in math and science.

Noynoy clarifies that “our Liberal Party position (not just mine nor Senator Mar Roxas’, but our collective position) is to add two more years to basic education to bridge this glaring gap.”

I am glad that, finally, we have a party stand, not just one person’s stand. One problem I have with Villar is that his senatorial candidates represent diametrically opposed worldviews. (Bongbong and Satur as NP bedfellows? C’mon!) Is it safe to assume that, if the LP senatorial candidates get into the Senate, they will all advocate the extension of our basic education cycle? I certainly hope so.

Noynoy adds: “The manner by which we will add the two years is to do so incrementally and to have the entire cycle in place by the end of the next Administration (i.e. 2016).” Basically, his idea appears to be to add and eventually to rename the two missing years, while allowing some students to skip the added levels.

This strategy answers the main objection raised by private high schools and colleges, based on the dire possibility of their not having incoming students.

Remember that I mentioned in my Jan. 7 column the main problem brought about by adding years to the basic education cycle. If we added a Grade 7, there would be a year without First Year high school students. If we added a Fifth Year, there would be a year without freshman college students (and the next year without sophomores and so on). Noynoy’s plan neatly sidesteps that objection by allowing half the Grade 6 class graduating in March 2011 to go on to First Year high school. That half will continue through the 10-year cycle (as all students do now) and eventually form the batch of incoming college students in June 2015.

The objection can be raised that private colleges and universities will still see their freshman enrolment cut in half in 2015. In Noynoy’s plan, this objection is met by instituting a second educational reform.

Noynoy says: “Starting year 1 of the new Administration, we intend to start building up towards a universal pre-school in every public elementary school (to be called kindergarten). This will target all 6 year olds who are not enrolled in Grade 1 (about 60+% to date).”

He adds: “If DepEd were even moderately successful in terms of reducing dropouts at every grade level such that the per year/grade size (e.g. enrolment) were increased even by 10%, this would add about one million more students in the entire system as a function of retention in school.”

In other words, the idea is to increase the number of children starting and finishing basic education. This will mean, therefore, that the number of high school graduates going to college will still be roughly the same as the number now. (Although exact calculations are impossible in real life, the idea is sound.)

If you remember, I proposed a similar scheme in this column last October. I called it then a “modest proposal,” because it stood no chance of being accepted by the public. Not being in any position to make any change, I had no illusion that applying the expanded educational cycle to only part of a class (called a “cohort” in DepEd terms) would ever be seriously entertained by the powers-that-be. Since Noynoy (at least at this moment) is fairly sure to be elected and will be in a position to effect the change, it looks like the idea might actually be implemented.

There is another problem with the scheme, however, aside from the objection raised by private school owners. How can the government fund the teachers, schoolrooms, and textbooks for the added years, when it does not even have enough money for the grade levels now existing? Noynoy answers this in his letter. (To be continued)