Lawmaker fears increased unemployment if senior high school is scrapped
(INQUIRER file photo / DALE ISRAEL)
MANILA, Philippines—Scrapping the Senior High School (SHS) proram could result in more jobless Filipinos, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian warned on Friday.
The propoisal to scrap the SHS program was made by Senate President Pro Tempore Jinggoy Estrada through a resolution he filed early this week.
But according to Gatchalian, this issue has also long been the subject of discussion in the Senate committee on basic education, which he chairs, as well as in the Congressional Commission on Education or Edcom.
“Our biggest fear is unemployment,” Gatchalian said in Filipino in a radio dzMM interview.
“My personal analysis is that our unemployment rate might increase because we now have underage youth—16 and 17 years old—who are only high school graduates and may not be able to get decent jobs or jobs with good pay,” Gatchalian said.
Grade levels 11 and 12 were added to the previous four-year secondary education in compliance with Republic Act No. 10533 or the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013.
It also known as K to 12 program as it requires children to enroll in kindergarten before they can start the six-year primary education.
The law was intended to make Filipino students at par with their counterparts in other countries.
But no less than the Department of Education admitted, during the hearing of the basic education panel last May, that the law “still has not fully achieved its goal,” Estrada noted in his resolution .
The reasons cited during the hearing were the congested curriculum, overworked teachers and students, and the low employment rate of SHS graduates, with only 10% entering the workforce, the senator added.
