A coalition of educators, students and parents is opposing the government’s revised Senior High School curriculum, warning it could displace up to 65,000 teachers and weaken instruction in the social sciences and humanities.
The KILOS SHS Network, a recently formed advocacy group, said the Department of Education’s (DepEd) “strengthened” curriculum prioritizes narrow technical training and labor-market employability at the expense of critical thinking and historical consciousness.
“These policies continue to reorient Philippine education toward narrow labor-market training, while diminishing its role in cultivating critical thinking, historical consciousness, and social responsibility,” the group said in a statement.
The coalition estimated that 35,000 senior high school teachers and 30,000 college faculty members could face job loss or displacement under the new framework. The group compared the current situation to the initial implementation of the K-12 program, which it said resulted in many educators being reassigned outside their areas of specialization.
ACT Teachers Partylist Representative Antonio Tinio, who joined the group’s launch, criticized DepEd for what he called abrupt overhauls that disregard the careers of long-time educators.
“You cannot just change the curriculum suddenly,” Tinio said in Filipino. “DepEd changes the curriculum just like that, and it is the lives and careers of teachers that are affected. It is unjust, and we must oppose it.”