We welcome the reports of the government that they are allocating a huge budget in improving the education system to make us comparable to our neighboring countries. However, we ask you to open your eyes to the truth that the government, especially DepEd, is not completely ready. The Philippine educational system is not yet ready. This debate is not to argue about K-12 but to point out valid reasons why K-12 curriculum implementation should be abated. This does not mean that we will not implement it. We will but not today.
I, the first speaker on the affirmative side, firmly stand that the K-12 curriculum should be abated based on the following grounds: .
1. The state is not yet ready for the new educational system as far as structures and personnel is concerned. The problem in Philippine education is the most basic- lack of pencils, paper, books, chairs, classrooms and teachers. The report of President Aquino of the completion of about 66,800 classrooms, which is said to answer the backlog in classrooms, is admirable. But, ladies and gentlemen, what was not included in the report is that the computation of classroom backlog was based on the 2010 survey as reported in the World Economic Forum. Are we not in 2014 now? That survey may have been true for 2010 but the increase in number of students and deficit in classroom nowadays is much higher.
As far as the report by the Alliance of Concerned Teachers published in GMA net news as of June 2014, that for 21 million students there is a need of 97,685 classrooms and 510,629 teachers. K-12 was implemented by 2012 and classroom construction was only started by 2013 and is still ongoing up to the present. This is evidence of the classroom shortage in public schools and the lack of preparedness of the government for the impact of K-12. .
Furthermore, K-12 is a program focused on training students to be skilled in their preferred field whether in engineering, ICT, technical vocational courses, or entrepreneurship.
