The K+12 plan should be seen in the context of the government’s war against poverty.

The statistics are too familiar. One out of every 10 Filipino children never steps into a school. Out of every 100 that do enter Grade 1, only 86 make it to Grade 2 and only 76 finish Grade 3. Only 65 finish Grade 6 and only 58 continue to high school. Only 43 finish four years of high school and only 23 enrol in college (of whom 15 go to private HEIs). Finally, only 14 finish an undergraduate degree.

Right now, only those 14 have a realistic chance of getting a good job or setting up a successful business. The K+12 plan addresses the needs of the 86 that do not get a college degree. The plan gives these 86 two more years of free education that should give them enough skills to get a good job or to put up a successful business enterprise.

That is one side of the debate. Here is the other side. (In order to be exhaustive, as well as fair, I will discuss only one point per side every week.)

Opponents of the K+12 plan point out that, even if the two more years of education were free, parents still have to shell out money for transportation, clothes, food, projects, and incidentals. That most parents cannot afford the extra two years is shown by the government statistics themselves. The primary reason for dropping out of school is economic.

Parents would rather have their children stay uneducated than risk entire families going hungry or getting into indescribable debt. The plan, according to its opponents, worsens rather than lessens poverty.

Since I said last week that I would show the weaknesses of both sides of the debate, let me ask the question, what is wrong with both sides?

Proponents of the K+12 plan should not make it appear (even unwittingly) that they have found a cure-all for our problems with education. The plan will indeed, as I will discuss in future columns, solve some curriculum-related problems, but it will not solve all the other problems (classrooms, teachers, textbooks, teacher training, drop-out rate, corruption, and so on). In particular, it does not solve the problems of the 57 that do not finish four years of high school at all.

The plan attempts to help only the 20 that finish four years of high school but do not go on to college (that’s 43 minus 23). It is these 20 that will be given another chance to raise their quality of life. Even the 8 that go to public HEIs might want to just earn a high school diploma instead of working for a four-year college degree; they could also be helped by the plan. We are, therefore, talking of only at least 20 and at most 28 beneficiaries. (Of course, you have to multiply those percentages by the total school-age population.)

If the expectations from the plan were kept limited, it would be much easier to sell to the public. After all, the 57 that do not even get to finish four years of high school will not be affected by the additional two years and should not join the debate. The 15 that go to private HEIs presumably have some money and would be minimally affected by the additional years.

Opponents of the plan, on the other hand, have a credibility problem. Practically all of them do not belong to the 20 to 28 that will benefit from the plan, since they are college graduates. There is clearly something very wrong with privileged people trying to keep those that drop out after high school from having another two years of free education.

The argument against the opponents, however, need not stay on the ad hominem level (shooting the messenger rather than listening to the message). The Work Minus Two argument (that I wrote about in an earlier column) shows that parents actually save money by accepting the K+12 plan. Instead of having to pay college tuition and incidentals (transportation, food, etc.) for four years, parents need to pay for only two more years of allowances. The poor parents of the 20 to 28 can now look forward to their children earning money after the technical track of Senior High School.

We should, therefore, stop talking of parents objecting to the extra two years. Once explained properly to them, the K+12 plan will be acceptable to poor parents. In fact, in 2003, SWS conducted a nationwide survey asking parents (rich and poor) if they would object to adding Grade 7 to elementary school and 70% said they wanted the extra year, with the figure constant across economic classes and across geographical regions. Parents clearly want children in public schools to have a longer basic education cycle. (To be continued)