The K-12 Basic Education Program, which was initiated by the Aquino administration, aims to reform our current

system of education into a theoretically better and more efficient one. The program will require all incoming students to enroll into two more years of basic education, which when broken down includes Universal kindergarten, 6 years of elementary, 4 years of junior high school and an additional 2 years for senior high school. The purpose of the program is to uplift the quality of education in the Philippines in order for graduates to be easily employed. The program also aims to meet the standards required for professionals who would want to work abroad. This would be especially important now that our compatriots are experiencing hardship mostly due to lack of education to be able to join the workforce and become more of an asset rather than a liability to our country. According to the DepEd discussion paper, the K-12 curriculum aims to enable every child to achieve mastery of core competencies and skills and develop tracks based on the students interests and competencies. The focus of K-12 is twofold: curriculum enhancement and transition management. The curriculum enhancement aims to give the students time to strengthen their competencies and academic skills. The curriculum will also provide specializations in the following: science and technology, music and arts, agriculture and fisheries, sports, business and entrepreneurship among others, depending on what occupation the student intends to pursue. These two years will build on skills that are essential to their chosen field. The transition managements goal, on the other hand, is to prepare a carefully sequenced implementation plan to ensure smooth transition with the least disruption in the current program. According to the kuro-kuro site (Is the Philippines ready for K+12?, n.d.): As of the moment, the Education Sector lacks 150+ thousand classrooms, 100+ thousand teachers, 95+ million textbooks and 13+ million seats. There is a good reason why our Education Sector is in short of the basic necessities of studying, and that is the low budget that the National Government gives to the Education Sector. Even if the budget allocation for Education this year increased 11.4% making it 16.5% of the National Budget or P271 billion compared to the budget allocation for Education on 2010, that is 15.6% of the National Budget or P240 billion, the budget is still insufficient to meet the needs of the Sector. In fact, Anakbayan spokesperson Clarizze Banez said: Even if you combine the DepEd and SUCs (state college and universities) budgets, it will only equal to three percent of the GDP, a far cry from the six percent GDFP-amount advocated by the United Nations.

The Department of Education needs P150 billion to fill all the gaps that it has, and to produce all the needed resources. DepEd plans to implement the K-12 Policy beginning this June, 2012

Sources:
http://education-teaching-careers.knoji.com/k12-education-in-the-philippines/ http://www.smartparenting.com.ph/kids/preschooler/k-12-101-a-primer-on-the-new-philippineeducation-curriculum/page/5 http://www.kuro-kuro.org/bb/topic/is-the-philippines-ready-for-k12