Cost to parents of 2 more years in basic educ may be known in October

The extra expenses that parents may have to shoulder for a two-year extension of the basic education cycle may be known in October, Malacañang said over the weekend. Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said in October, Education Secretary Armin Luistro will bare details of the plan to extend the basic education cycle to 12 years. "Ilalahad ni Sec. Luistro sa Oct. 5 ang buong picture ng 12-year cycle para makita ng magulang ano ang expenses diyan (On the matter of expenses, parents will get an idea when Luistro bares the details of the 12-year cycle)," Lacierda said on government-run dzRB radio. But he added the two-year extension will be “free" at least in public schools, adding it is more an investment because it will prepare students for employment even if they forgo college. He asked parents not to pass judgment on the extension plan until October 5, during Secretary Luistro's presentation of the details of the extension proposal. “It may look like an added burden in the short term but in the long term it will help all of us. We know many students cannot go to college. So with this extension, when they graduate, they will be employable," he said. More harm than good The plan to add two more years to the 10-year basic education cycle might do more harm than good, a Catholic Church official said. Retired Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz said the Department of Education (DepEd) might be focusing on a “wrong priority" and may cause more dropouts. “It is not timely because people are hard up specially those who are in the lower class pyramid and because it will entail [additional] expenses," Cruz said in an article posted on the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines news site. He said an additional two years of schooling will definitely add to the burden of Filipino families, most of whom are poor, in terms of buying school supplies and giving “baon" (allowances). Worse, he said the program could further exploit the teachers by subjecting them to more workload for less pay. “It’s not timely for DepEd because it does not have the money to have all these payments for teachers," he added. Earlier, Education Secretary Luistro said the program involves seven years for the elementary level and five years in the secondary (high school) level. Under the program, irrelevant subjects would be removed while new subjects would be incorporated into the curriculum to develop the technical and vocational skills of the students. Luistro also said the DepEd would try to address the perennial problems of increasing rate of student dropouts, backlogs, textbooks, and shortage of classrooms in two years. — LBG, GMANews.TV