Immersion in senior high school

As an admitted maverick in the field of education, I have been doing things by myself without benefit of official blessing from the government or any educational institution.

For example, before Noynoy Aquino became president, I convened a series of Curriculum Summits to talk about how to improve the curriculum. In those Summits, the country’s leading education officials agreed that adding two more years to basic education would be an ideal way to solve a number of problems in the system.

President Aquino, the different government institutions involved in education, and Congress have since made K to 12 a reality rather than a mere ideal.

As I looked over the paradigm created by the steering committee of the K to 12 reform program, however, I suddenly realized that we had overlooked a major gap in the system.

The curriculum has been reengineered from pre-school to tertiary general education. It is now seamless, without disruptions caused previously by trifocalization and bureaucratic structures. We have firmly agreed on what students should know and be able to do after 12 years of basic education or more (if they go to college).

What is missing is a clear idea of what the term “Immersion” implies.

In the approved latest draft of the Senior High School (SHS) curriculum, students that choose to take the Technical-Vocational-Livelihood and the Arts and Sports tracks are expected to spend 1,404 hours outside campus, doing “Immersion.”

This total is divided into four. In the first half or semester of Grade 11, the student will spend 270 hours in a company, field, organization, or other workplace. In the second half or semester of Grade 11, s/he will spend another 270 hours. In the first half or semester of Grade 12, s/he will do 324 hours.

In the final half or semester of Grade 12, the student will spend practically all the time (or 540 hours) outside campus (except for a few monitoring or processing sessions on campus). In effect, for much of three-fourths of his or her time and for a whole fourth of his or her time in SHS, the student becomes a de facto full-time employee or worker in a workplace.

Our country has had a lot of experience with on-the-job training (OJT) programs on the collegiate level. Unfortunately, many (if not most) college OJT students are assigned only to insignificant jobs in a company (answering the phone, making photocopies, making coffee – that sort of thing). Rarely are OJT students expected to produce the same products that regular employees produce.

There are sterling exceptions, of course, one of which is the journalism college that I head, where OJT students, like our own students, write news items in a newspaper just like regular reporters. (Excuse me for mentioning that, but then, why not?)

Immersion in SHS will be useless if it is patterned after most of the OJT experiences currently being undertaken by college students.

In order to make Immersion meaningful and useful, we need to get the companies – and not just the schools – aware of the educational objectives and processes of K to 12.

The human resources departments of companies have to know what it means to handle inexperienced adolescents (still with no work ethic but with raging hormones), how to make them do without pay what adult employees are doing for pay, what the design of the curriculum is (Understanding By Design, remember?), what the role of Immersion is in the whole process of lifelong learning, and so on. That means training for staff in companies. That means expertise and funds.

I could not expect the Department of Education (DepEd) to do this training, because the students and their company mentors will not be in school campuses but in workplaces. Neither could the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), because the students will not yet have been admitted to tertiary studies. Despite its being in close touch with various industries, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) does not have the expertise to do it, because TESDA students are trained in TESDA centers, not in actual workplaces.

Therefore, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I knew about the German dual education system, where students work while they study. Because the Philippines already has a few German-style dual-education programs (and even a law!), I thought of asking the German government to help us out with this missing link in the K to 12 reform.

Since I had no government personality, I sought the help of one of the most effective and efficient government officials we now have in our foreign service, the Philippine ambassador to Germany, Maria Cleofe Natividad. She is an excellent example of the way our foreign service is quietly working to make other countries aware of the positive change in our political and economic climate.

Under Ambassador Natividad’s extraordinary leadership and fully supported by Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert Del Rosario, I talked to German agencies and companies. We found an ally in a German foundation already working in Cebu and Mindanao, the non-profit AFOS Foundation for Entrepreneurial Development Cooperation, which had successfully put up networks with the Cebu and Mandaue Chambers of Commerce, Don Bosco, and the University of San Carlos.   (To be continued)