The new BEC

Last April 17, The Department of Education (DepEd) released DepEd Order (DO) No. 31, s. 2012, entitled “Policy Guidelines on the Implementation of Grades 1 to 10 of the K to 12 Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) Effective School Year 2012-2013.”

Last April 24, President Noynoy Aquino formally launched the new BEC in Malacañang. That was the second formal launch in Malacañang related to the K to 12 reform program. The first one was held last Feb. 27 to celebrate the signing into law of RA 10157, known as the Kindergarten Education Act. That law provides, among other things, that Kindergarten “shall be made mandatory and compulsory for entrance to Grade 1.”

DO 31 institutionalizes what the government has been talking about since Noynoy Aquino assumed the presidency in June 2010, namely, the change in the curriculum of all public and private elementary and high schools in the country.

Let us look at some of the provisions of DO 31, particularly those that are of immediate relevance to schools.

First, all schools have to name the first year of secondary school as Grade 7. That is easy to do for public high schools, because all they have to do is to replace the words “First Year High School” with “Grade 7” in their records and door signs.

That is also easy to do with private schools that do not offer a Grade 7. They merely have to change the name of their first year high school sections on paper and on classroom walls.

That is not so easy to do in private schools that now have Grade 7. Grade 7 in these private schools (which are very few anyway) are really part of elementary, not secondary education; they are mere bridging programs to what is properly First Year High School.

These schools have various options. The simplest one is to tell parents of children who were supposed to be left behind in elementary school that their children will be joining their Grade 6 classmates in high school after all. This option has two relatively minor drawbacks: these children will not have gone through an elementary school graduation ceremony, and teachers previously assigned to teach them will have to be reassigned.

More complicated is the option that involves mass acceleration. Students going into what was supposed to be Grade 7 can now be told that they will still be in Grade 7, except that they are now in high school. Students going into what they thought would be First Year High School can be told that they will now be in Grade 8 (or Second Year High School). This option requires the school to offer an abbreviated bridging program, to ensure that the incoming Grade 8 students will have had the equivalent of the old First Year High School curriculum. (I warned you that it would be complicated!)

Second, DO 31 mandates that all public elementary and secondary schools are obliged to implement the new BEC. Note the word “public.” What about private schools? Do they have to change their curriculum for Grades 1 and 7 this June?

The first provision of DO 31 reads this way: “Effective School Year (SY) 2012-2013, the K to 12 Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) shall be implemented starting with the roll-out of Grades 1 and 7 in all public elementary and secondary schools. Private schools are enjoined to do the same. They may further enhance the curriculum to suit their school vision/mission.”

The verb “enjoined” may be interpreted in various ways, including “not compulsory.” The second sentence, however, has to be read in the context of the third sentence. By acknowledging that students in private schools want to have more than the minimum learning competencies required of students in public schools, DO 31 actually commands private schools to follow the new curriculum, but to “enhance” it in ways suited to their own visions and missions. (If the curriculum were not being followed, there would be nothing to enhance.)

To see what that means, let us take a simple example. For Grade 7, the BEC requires only 4 hours of English a week. Many private schools would like their students to spend more time learning English. According to DO 31, these schools are allowed to require their students to have more than 4 hours of English a week.

That seems harmless enough, until we look at the bigger picture. Most private schools offer not just more hours of English, but a lot of hours on whatever their owners want to do with the schools in the first place. For example, Catholic schools want their students to study religion; they require their students to stay on campus longer than public school students.

By adding more English hours (as well as more hours of the other learning areas), a school runs the risk of having their students transfer to other schools with fewer hours. Why is this so? The more hours a private school requires, the more teachers it needs. The more teachers it needs, the more income it needs to pay salaries. That translates to higher tuition fees. Eventually, during these hard times, parents will want to enrol their children in private schools with lower tuition fees. In fact, more and more private school students are transferring to tuition-free public schools. (To be continued)