Lack of classrooms, obsolete instructional technologies and materials, underpaid teachers, and insufficient educational support for less fortunate kids – these are some of the typical issues that were exacerbated when the Philippines introduced the K-12 Curriculum. It is not being argued that K-12 Curriculum is fundamentally terrible and that the government should abolish it; rather, adjustments and reforms are required to address the gaps and flaws in it.
Fortune favors the Bold. The K-12 Curriculum has a grandiose goal of bringing Philippine education up to global standards. It strives to enhance the mathematical, scientific, and linguistic abilities of Filipino learners. DepEd stated that the new curriculum will provide higher-quality education through tracks. Students will have ample time to learn a field and improve their abilities on each track. Eventually, K-12 graduates will become internationally competitive and will be able to find work in a competitive labor market. As we can see, this new curriculum itself has a passionate intention to make the Philippine Education System produce level-headed learners. The problem only lies on the mismanagement of its implementation and lack of fund to sustain it. Shifting the Philippines from a Presidential to a Parliamentary system will tackle the problem of implementation, while making the Philippines an investor-friendly country will alleviate the problem of insufficient funds.
How does Economic Liberalization will solve the insufficient allocated funds for K-12 Curriculum? Reallocation of the National Budget is not enough. All political and economic sectors are essential in order for a whole country to operate well. We cannot sacrifice one sector just to make another sector to work. Furthermore, it’s also impractical to raise taxes just to sustain the implementation of K-12 Curriculum, it will cripple the standards of living of those who belong to lower socioeconomic status. The state needs to double its revenue. By opening the foreign direct investment, the country will have an additional source of revenue from the taxes of the foreign multinational companies and the additional number of employed Filipinos who gained job opportunities from foreign direct investment. This will give an additional fund for the government in order to execute economic projects. From this doubled revenue, the country will use this to establish more classrooms for facilitating learning experience, replace the obsolete instructional technology to new one, increase the salary of teachers in order for them to boost their efficiency, and provide free laptops or any other devices that will be helpful for the less privileged learners.
How does Shifting of the Philippines to Parliamentary System will improve the managerial aspect of K-12 Curriculum? In parliamentary system, there is an equal number and power between the government and the opposition (shadow cabinet). Each member of the government has a counterpart, if the government has a minister of health, there is also a shadow minister of health in the opposition. If there is a minister of education in the government, there is also shadow minister of education in the shadow cabinet (Linz, 1990 – Mainwaring, 1993). The role of shadow cabinet is to scrutinize every move of the government. The opposition in the parliamentary system is much powerful than the opposition in the presidential system. Every week in parliamentary system, there is an adversarial debate called Question Hour. The government is obliged to present their accomplishment report from the entire week and then the shadow cabinet will directly criticize and raise hot seat questions. If the shadow cabinet will discover some aroma of corruption and negligence duty, they have the power to initiate a simple majority vote called motion of no confidence in order to remove an unfit official. Parliamentary System has a better elimination method the impeachment process of Presidential System. This will create fear for the public servants who will attempt to commit corruption. From this political structure, mismanagement of funds and lousy implementation of K-12 Curriculum will be prevented because of more intense checks-and-balances. Parliamentary System is more politically stable than Presidential System (Linz, 1985). If a particular minister of education will not perform his/her duty with benevolent commitment and integrity, he/she can be just eliminated via motion of no confidence and be replaced by more deserving overseer. Most of the countries that has a promising performance on educational system practices parliamentary system as a form of government. Good system brings Good educational system, Bad system breeds Bad educational system.
System shapes behavior. We should focus on formulation of solutions, not just on spotting loopholes and blind spots. We should not gamble with the future. Good educational system for our children’s children requires stable and sound government system. Nothing will change if nothing will change.