• Petitioners call on the Supreme Court to resolve petitions against the K to 12 educational program
• The full implementation of the program will have disastrous results, the petitioners said
• Tens of thousands of college teachers and non-teaching employees will be displaced for lack of enrollees for 1st and 2nd year college
Petitioners – composed of educators, parents and students – took to the streets to urge the Supreme Court to resolve the petitions seeking to stop the full implementation of the government’s K to 12 Program, which added two more years in high school education.
The K to 12 Program is set to be fully implemented this coming school year 2016-2017. The petitioners warned of massive dropping out of students and mass lay-offs of teachers and non-teaching employees of colleges once the new educational system is implemented.
In the article she wrote for Bulatlat dated February 23, 2016, Anne Marxze D. Umil wrote that only 1.6 million of the 2.2 million students who finished Grade 10 can enroll to Grade 11 in public high schools. The rest, or 800,000 students, will be forced to enroll in private schools because not all public high schools in the country will offer the Senior High School Program.
The article said that although the Department of Education will give subsidy to the students who will opt to enroll in private school through its Senior High School Voucher Program, the amount that will be given is only P18,000 to P22,000 voucher per student, which is not enough to pay for the fees charged by private schools. Students from poor families who cannot afford private education will be forced to drop out.
Because of the additional two years of senior high school, colleges and universities expect no enrollment of first year and second year college students that will lead to the displacement of tens of thousands of teachers and non-teaching personnel.
Filipino professor David San Juan of the United Petitioners Against K to 12 said they will continue the fight against the new educational program until it is suspended.
“We will continue our fight wherever we are until this K to 12 program which is disastrous to the teachers, the students and parents will be suspended,” he said
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