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Filipino teachers are fighting the government’s ‘K to 12’ plan which they believe would increase education privatisation and commercialisation and be detrimental to access to quality education for all.

The ‘K to 12’ proposal, extending the school years by two years to be spent in privately-operated education institutions, must be stopped, as it is “a direct violation of the people’s right to free secondary education” and “unconstitutional”, said the Alliance of Concerned Teachers’ (ACT) President, Benjamin Valbuena, during a press conference explaining the trade union’s opposition to the government plan and calling for actions in the future.

Move to private education

As per the Department of Education’s own data, around 500, 000 public junior high schools’ students will be forced to transfer to for-profit private senior high schools this June. Parents are already complaining that the school vouchers will not cover the full enrolment expenses, Valbuena said. According to the ACT, the failure of publicly funded, privately managed schools is documented in countries such as the USA and Sweden.

“The ‘K to 12’ will enrich the owners of private senior high schools such as the Ayalas who co-own APEC Schools, a big chain of senior high schools formed through a consortium with the transnational education corporation, Pearson,” he said.

He also deplored that the Supreme Court dismissed the petition filed by different education organisations and stakeholders asking for the government order implementing the ‘K to 12’ proposal to be stopped.

The ACT urges the national Supreme Court to seek petitioners to present their arguments against the government plan.

Limited resources

Valbuena went on to warn that the ‘K to 12’ proposal will further damage the quality of education in the country, as it will reduce the already limited resources allocated to education.

The government’s budget for education has never reached four per cent of gross domestic product, “which is way below the global standard of 6%”, Valbuena said. Adding two more years of education will only multiply the unresolved gaps in teachers, education staff, facilities, and instructional materials in many public schools, he noted.

Alternative choice

The ACT leader further stressed that there is an alternative to ‘K to 12’ proposal: “improving the current ‘K to 10’ public education system, so as to resolve all current gaps in personnel, facilities and teaching and learning materials, while aligning the whole education system to the needs of the Philippines, instead of foreign countries”.