Education officials in the Philippines had another not-so-bright idea last week on how to improve the standard of education in the country. This time, the Commission on Higher Education, initially endorsed by the Presidential Task Force for Education, wanted a five-year schedule for several college courses, such as education, accounting, nursing, physical therapy and occupational therapy.
In 2004, the Department of Education was all set to implement a “Pre-Secondary Bridge Program,” which would add an extra year between sixth grade and first year high school for elementary graduates who were found to be deficient in English, Math and Science subjects. But a hail of criticisms met the plan, and education officials backed off. But they are still hoping to implement the program in the future.
Through the “Pre-Secondary Bridge Program,” education officials said they hoped to arrest the trend of poor showing by public school students, especially in these subjects. Diagnostic tests conducted by the DOE in the past two years found that 7 out of 10 incoming public school freshmen had been found wanting in the mastery of their English, Math and Science subjects.
Under the program, those who were found deficient in these three subjects would be required to take the one-year program, which would only tackle the three subjects, for two hours each every school day. The students wouldn’t be allowed to enter public high school until they passed the subjects.
However, the same teachers who taught the subjects to the lagging students would be teaching them, making me wonder then what made education officials think that what the teachers failed to make students appreciate and understand for six years would be appreciated and understood by these students in one year?
The extra year would have only discouraged thousands of parents, who are already saddled by the high cost of sending their children to school, to send them to high school. This would be even more disastrous because it would not just be the proficiency rating in the three subjects that would suffer, but the very future of tens of thousands of students.
Now comes CHED chairman Manny Angeles proposing a 10+2+3 scheme to enable the country’s education system to “conform with global standards while equipping students with the skills necessary for them to be competitive both in the local and international job market.”
Under the scheme, students, after the completion of 10-year basic education (6 years primary and 4 years secondary education), may opt to go to technical schools or take a two-year pre-university program before finally pursuing the three years specialization courses.
Angeles also said the proposed curricular reform will be implemented in two phases with Phase 1 taking effect starting next school year (2009-2010) for five-year degree programs in Education, Nursing, Accounting, Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, and Pharmacy.
Again, after much criticisms, Malacanang said it would not support the CHED proposal.
It is good to know that the country’s education officials have finally acknowledged that the standard of education in the Philippines has dropped considerably in recent years, and that they are finally doing something about it. But I believe they are offering a solution to a completely different problem. Angeles and his advisers must be reading too many studies, and overlooked the fact that it is not the curriculum nor the length of study that haunt the Philippine education system, but the low standards of teaching in the country’s many schools supposedly for higher learning.
There must be hundreds of colleges and universities in the Philippines that probably don’t deserve to be giving out college diplomas in the first place. And there must be thousands of college instructors who probably didn’t even deserve to be given a college diploma, much more to teach college students.
The first thing that the Department of Education should do is to make an assessment of the hundreds, probably thousands of technical schools, colleges and universities in the country, and void the license of those that are obviously just “diploma mills.” These colleges and universities are defrauding the students and their parents of their hard-earned tuition money, not to mention the incidental expenses that they have to incur during the course of their study.
Another thing that the education department should do is to make regular assessments of the quality of teaching of the instructors in these colleges and universities. I bet you not even half of them deserve their teaching credentials.
What good would an extra year in nursing or accounting do if the same group of unqualified instructors or professors would teach those extra subjects? And why even bother to burden students an extra year of college education when a college diploma cannot even assure them of a job as a sales clerk in a department store?
The extra year would only add to the already heavy cost of education in the country and make life even more difficult for the already over-burdened Filipinos. The United States require only two years of education for registered nurses, and about a year for licensed vocational nurses, and yet education officials think Filipino students need five years of education before they can take care of the sick? These are nursing students, not medical students, for God’s sake!
The US also requires just two additional years in law school to become a lawyer, while Filipino students have to have four more years in law school on top of the bachelor’s degree to become a lawyer, and yet many of them end up just “notarios” at city hall or on Claro M. Recto Ave.
Filipino accounting students take all of four years to become accountants, and many of them end up mere bookkeepers anyway. In the US, students take up special bookkeeping courses in adult schools and get good-paying jobs.
Instead of looking to extend the college courses by one year, or high school by another year, education officials should instead try to find a way to shorten the courses without sacrificing the quality of graduates. For example, there are so many subjects that nursing or accounting students, for example, don’t need to learn their trade, such as two semesters of Pilipino, two semesters of Spanish, two semesters of physical education, etc. that are just repeats of what had been studied for at least two years in high school.
In addition, education officials should reevaluate the National College Entrance Examinations (NCEE) to make sure that only those who are truly qualified get to college, and spare those who are not ready for college studies the burden of paying for tuition and other college expenses. Those who fail the NCEE should be encouraged to take vocational or technical courses instead, which, after all, are what the country needs.
The country already has too many graduates in banking and finance, commerce, business administration, political science, etc. when what it needs are factory technicians, auto mechanics, agricultural workers, computer technicians and programmers, construction managers, machine operators, and other technical workers.
An improved quality of education, instead of extra year, is what Filipino students need.