May 29 to June 2, 2012

Hello 7th graders!

Schools open on Monday in K to 12 fashion

There will be no more first year high school on Monday.

On June 4, the first day of school year 2012-13, Grade 7 will already be a student's first level in junior high school. Cynthia G. Demavivas, Asst. Schools Division Superintendent and OIC of the Department of Education-Division of San Carlos, confirmed that it is "all systems go" for the Kindergarten plus 12 years of Basic Education Program (K to 12)  on the opening of classes for both public and private schools all over the country.

In San Carlos, 150 Grade 1 teachers plus four local trainers and 92 Grade 7 (formerly first year high school) subject teachers have already been trained for K to 12.

Three things

Demavivas pointed that there are three major changes that come with K to 12.

First is the implementation of the Mother Tongue-Based Multi-Lingual Education (MTB-MLE) for kindergarten to Grade 3. MTB-MLE is contained in DepEd Order No. 16, series of 2012. It is now part of the new curriculum both as a subject area and as a medium of instruction and it will use 12 Philippine Languages depending on the mother tongue of the pupils. These languages include Tagalog, Kapampangan, Pangasinense, Iloko, Bikol, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Waray, Tausug, Maguindanaonon, Maranao, and Chabacano.

Second is that the mother tongue will be used as medium of instruction for all Grade 1 subjects instead of English.

Third, that for Grade 7, there will already be less "contact time" between teachers and students. Demavivas explained that the students will be given activities to give way to independent and cooperative learning with less supervision by the teacher who will then become a facilitator.

The thrust of this principle is to decongest the high school curriculum and encourage the application of lessons learned within the day.

Secondary problem

Answering the common concern of the public that K to 12 further compounds the lack of teachers in public schools, the assistant schools division superintendent-OIC said that for elementary schools in the city there is no shortage of teachers. However, she admitted that public secondary schools need at least 21 subject teachers since only six items arrived for Julio Ledesma National High School (JLNHS).

"Eventhough without K to 12, ang secondary na ya namon problema gid na," she explained and added that several divisions in Region VI also face the same obstacle.

Teacher aides

For San Carlos, the local government unit is trying to augment the defiency by recently hiring 10 teacher aides who can hold classes with salary equivalent to that of a regular public elementary school teacher. There are also 83 other teacher aides paid by the LGU although they only receive P 4,500 a month.

Enough classrooms

On classroom shortage, Demavivas revealed that there is no problem yet since senior high school will only be opened when this school year's seventh graders will be in Grade 11, that will be four years from now. She also reported that three classrooms for pre-school had been opened in Barangay Cod-Cod, San Jose in Barangay Guadalupe, and in Greenville, Barangay Rizal.