The advantages of the K to 12 curriculum over the old Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) are clearest in the Track subjects of Senior High School (SHS).
The SHS curriculum is divided into two parts: the part that prepares students for higher education (called the “Core Subjects”) and the part that prepares students for immediate employment (called the “Track Subjects”). For those that do not want to get a job immediately after high school, there is a provision for an Academic Track.
In the BEC, students were not prepared to enter college. As a result, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) had to spend most of the first two years of college students just preparing them for real college-level work. Instead of immediately studying college-level courses, students had to take up English, Filipino, Math, Science, Physical Education, and a lot of other subjects that they should have mastered in high school.
In order to make their children employable under the old system (10 years of basic education plus 4 or 5 years of college), parents spent a lot more for their children than they now do in the K to 12 curriculum. Under the K to 12 curriculum, the parents do not have to spend for their children to be employable, because these children will be employable at the end of high school.
I am talking about tuition, which is free in public schools. Parents have to spend for clothes, transportation, and meals whether their children are in high school or in college. It is a mistake to think that the government has added two years to the burden of parents. In fact, they have subtracted two or three years from the years parents had to spend for their children to be employable.
Parents are saving money under the K to 12 system.
How does the K to 12 curriculum prepare students to be immediately employable? (I will set aside for the moment another objective of the curriculum, which is to give students the tools they need to start their own business.)
Let us return to the description of the SHS subjects. There are three types: Core Subjects, Applied Track Subjects, and Specialized Subjects. The Core Subjects have the same content and the same competencies for all students in all schools in the country.
Students have to choose which Track they want to pursue in SHS. There are four tracks: Academic, Technical-Vocational-Livelihood (TVL), Sports, and Arts & Design.
The Applied Track Subjects aim to equip all students with the same competencies, using different content depending on the Track that students take. This will become clearer when we go into the specifics of the subjects.
The Specialized Subjects are completely dependent on the Track that the students take. They have different content and aim to equip the students with different competencies.
Let us take an example to make the situation clearer.
Let us say that Juan, who is in Grade 7, dreams of working in a hotel. In Grade 7 and in the next grade (Grade 8), he will explore various career paths. He chooses to take 40 hours of Front Office Services for his classes in Exploratory Technology and Livelihood Education (TLE) in Grade 7 and/or Grade 8.
In Grade 9 and Grade 10, Juan will take what is known as Specialized TLE.
He will complete enough hours (160 hours all told) of Front Office Services in Grade 9 to earn a National Certificate II (NC II) from the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), which now works closely with the Department of Education (DepEd) in the K to 12 curriculum.
In Grade 10, Juan will take Travel Services for another 160 hours, enough to earn another NC II.
In Grade 11, Juan will take Tour Guiding Services as a Specialized Subject for another 160 hours, enough to earn a third NC II.
In Grade 12, Juan will take Tourism Promotion Services for his Specialized Subject for another 160 hours, enough to earn a fourth NC II.
When he graduates from high school, Juan will have four NC IIs, enough for him to be employed immediately in our growing hospitality industry. In short, he has a job waiting for him as soon as he turns 18 years old.
Compare that with what happens in the old BEC curriculum. When he finishes Fourth Year High School, he does not have any NCs and is only 16 years old. He cannot be employed in the hotel that he dreams of working in. He has to go to college and, in most of the first two years of college, he will take only General Education (GE) subjects such as English, Filipino, Math, and Science. He needs to take major HRM subjects in the next two years to get the skills that, in the K to 12 curriculum, he will already have by the time he finishes high school.
In fact, in college under the old system, he might not even get the NCs that hotels need. While saving money because he does not have to pay tuition in college or the fees of Accredited TVET Institutions, he even gets to fulfill his dream sooner.
(To be continued)