Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, February 1) — The Department of Education (DepEd) on Wednesday said President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has given the agency a year to complete its review of the K to 12 curriculum as it aims to revise the program amid issues facing the country’s education sector.
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“The President gave us a timeline of around a year to finish the review,” DepEd spokesperson Michael Poa told CNN Philippines’ The Source.
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Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte earlier said her department will revise the K to 12 curriculum to make it more responsive and develop lifelong learners.
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She noted in a speech that the ongoing review of the curriculum revealed its “content is congested, that some prerequisites of identified essential learning competencies are missing or misplaced, and that a significant number of learning competencies cater to high cognitive demands.”
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So far, the review for the curriculum for kinder to grade 10 has been concluded and is undergoing consultations with experts. The review for senior high school just started, Poa noted.
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“We are trying to decongest our curriculum to focus on definitely the essential subjects and the basics, like math, reading, science,” he said. “We want to really look at literacy in a way that we’ll be able to inculcate not just foundational literacy and also functional literacy.”
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Poa said the department does not want to rush the review, but it also hopes to implement the improved curriculum as soon as possible.
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Along with reviewing the curriculum, Poa said there is also a need to upskill and re-skill teachers, as well as look after the mental health and nutrition of learners.
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This holistic approach is seen to help in addressing the learning poverty in the Philippines reported by the World Bank, he noted.
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In 2022, the World Bank said nine out of 10 Filipino children aged 10 are still struggling to read even simple texts. This makes the Philippines one of the countries with the highest learning poverty rates in the East Asia and Pacific region.
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Recently, a video of children on TikTok doing the so-called past tense challenge caught the attention of netizens after they failed to answer correctly.
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Poa said it was “very concerning” surmising that this may be due to the two-year lockdown which prevented children from physically attending school. While online learning was implemented, not all students had internet access, he noted.
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Following the return of in-person classes last year, DepEd said it conducted an assessment to check if the learners were within their expected capacity depending on their age bracket.
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