DAVAO CITY – Teachers and students here welcomed the first day of school with a protest against the K to 12 program.
“This scheme results to more cheap and docile labor force, thereby creating more of the likes of Mary Jane Veloso from our ranks,” Joyce Perpetua, League of Filipino Students spokesperson, said during their protest action along San Pedro Street on Monday.
Malaya Genotiva of Anakbayan also said, K to 12 “imposes additional burden to Filipino families.”
“Instead of addressing the fundamental problems such as yearly reduction of the meager education budget, inadequacy of our classrooms, books, and facilities and lack of sufficient salaries of our teachers, [President Benigno Aquino] uses K to 12 as a scapegoat, and passes the responsibility to our parents who already find it [difficult] to send their children to school,” Genotiva said.
Genotiva said “of the 2 million students entering Senior High School (SHS), only half will be accommodated by the 3,839 public high schools that offer the SHS program.”
“The other half will be forced either to spend an average of Php 70, 000 per year in private high schools and other higher educational institutions, or to drop out of school,” she said.
Pilar Barredo, a high school teacher from Calinan National High School also joined the protest after her classes.
Barredo said the government is not prepared to implement K to 12.
The Suspend K to 12 Alliance also held a petition signing during the protest action.
In Metro Manila, concerned parents trooped to different schools with petition forms, asking other parents to support a nationwide signature campaign to stop K-12.
Parents Against K-12 or PMAK laid out tables for signups and handed out leaflets to guardians who accompanied their children to school enjoining them to oppose Aquino’s project to add two years of senior high school at the Hermogenes Bautista Elementary School.
The group said adding years to the education curriculum will not solve unemployment for graduates but will only add to parents’ financial burdens.
A multi-sectoral rally marched going to the presidential palace in the afternoon as protesters sought the suspension of the K-12 until the issues of the appropriated budget for new classrooms, and the lingering book and teacher shortages are addressed.
Gabriela Women’s Representative Emmi De Jesus who assisted the PMAK in collecting signatures said that K-12 is a de-facto privatization program as it will force half a million children to enroll in private senior high schools because of a persistent lack of public school buildings.
De Jesus demanded the convening of the Oversight Committee on the Enhanced Basic Education so that massive problems in K-12 implementation, including the displacement of about 30,000 college teachers who are set to lose their jobs as enrollment for college will stop for two years. (davaotoday.com)
