The Educational Process
Pre-Primary | Primary | Secondary

Pre-primary education

Pre-school education at the kindergarten level (age group 5-6 years) must aim to develop children in all aspects (physical, social, emotional, and cognitive) so that they will be better prepared to adjust and cope with life situations and the demands of formal schooling; and to maximize the children’s potential through a variety of carefully selected and meaningful experiences considering their interests and capabilities. The curriculum focuses on the following areas:

• Physical development: it includes gross and fine motor co-ordination through play and manipulative activities like games, simple works, etc.
• Personal-social development: it involves skills and social behaviours and it includes the development of health habits, independence, abilities to follow rules and routines. Learning about the family and other people is part of the concerns in this area.
• Affective development: it includes experiences that help children develop love for God, self, others and the community, and develop awareness of their feelings and sense of the right and wrong.
• Cognitive development: it includes the development of communication skills and sensory-perceptual and numeracy concepts and skills. Communication skills refer to competencies in expressing ideas and feelings both in English and Filipino (oral expression and basic readiness skills of listening, pre-reading and writing). Sensory-perceptual and numeracy skills refer to the ability to observe, discriminate, compare and classify, and to understand, count, read and write numbers.
• Creative-aesthetic development: it includes exploration of sounds, music and rhythms, and the development of children’s creative expression through drawing, painting, manipulative activities, etc.

In order to attain and ensure the holistic development of children, a well-planned curriculum and a well-balanced programme of activities are necessary, although they may vary according to each pre-school’s approach. Indoor and outdoor play are essential whatever approach the pre-school follows. The language spoken by the child should be valued. It is necessary that such language be used initially and until the children have attained the facility and confidence in expressing themselves in English and Filipino. The following table shows a sample programme of pre-school activities:

Sample programme of pre-school activities

The Pre-school Education Programme, established in 1992, aims to provide 5-year-olds in disadvantaged areas an opportunity for early peer socialization and learning activities before starting elementary education. The former DECS organized a total of 1,428 classes with 40,780 pupils in the twenty provinces covered by the Social Reform Agenda (SRA). A total of 638 pre-school teachers were trained in nine selected regions. Instructional materials and supplies were distributed to classes under the Department Programme, pre-schools run by Parent-Teacher Associations, and community-based pre-schools.

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Primary education

Elementary education provides basic education to pupils aged 7-12. The elementary course comprises six years (in some cases, seven years), the first four years termed primary grades and the last two years, intermediate grades.

The overall mission of elementary education is to enable pupils to acquire a basic preparation that will make them an enlightened, disciplined, self-reliant, God-loving, creative, versatile and productive citizens in a national community. The main objectives of elementary education are:                                        

• to provide knowledge and develop the skills, attitudes and values essential to the children’s personal development and necessary for living in and contributing to a developing and changing social milieu; 
• to provide learning experiences aimed at increasing the children’s awareness of and responsiveness to the demands of society, and to prepare them for constructive and effective involvement;
• to promote and intensify the children’s knowledge of, identification with, and love for the nation and the people to which they belong; 
• to promote work experiences aimed at developing and enhancing the children’s orientation to the world of work and creativity, and to prepare them for an honest and gainful work.

Curriculum policies are usually set forth by the Department of Education through various orders, circulars, memoranda and bulletins. They are aligned with national priorities and contribute to the achievement of development goals. However, several laws passed by the national legislature specifically relate to the school curriculum.

Development of the basic education curriculum is the responsibility of the Central Office Bureau of Elementary and Secondary Education, Curriculum Development Divisions. This bureau defines the learning competencies for the different subject areas; conceptualizes the structure of the curriculum; and formulates national curricular policies. These functions are exercised in consultation with other agencies and sectors of society (e.g. industry, social and civic groups, teacher-training institutions, professional organizations, school administrators, parents, students, etc.). The subject offerings, credit points and time allotments for the different subject areas are also determined at the national level. In this sense, a national curriculum exists in the Philippines. However, while curriculum implementation guidelines are issued at the national level, the actual implementation is left to school-teachers. They determine the resources to be used; teaching and assessment strategies and other processes. Furthermore, schools have the option to modify the national curriculum (e.g. content, sequence and teaching strategies) in order to ensure that the curriculum responds to local concerns.

The approach to curriculum design in the country is based on content topic and competency. The Department of Education prescribes competencies for the subject areas in all the grade/year levels. The Bureau of Elementary and Secondary Education develops, publishes and disseminates these learning competencies to the field. Most of the subject/learning areas have a list of learning competencies expected to be mastered by the children at the end of each grade/year level and also at the end of elementary/secondary schooling. Some subject/learning areas have a combination of both (i.e. learning competencies under each content/topic). The curriculum is designed to be interpreted by teachers and implemented with variations. Schools are encouraged to innovate and enrich or adapt, as along as they have met the basic requirements of the curriculum. In this context, the regional science high schools offer an enriched science and mathematics programme whereby students take additional science and mathematics subjects. In some private schools, English, science and mathematics subjects are taken in lieu of values education; this is because subjects like religion, moral values and ethics already have been incorporated. In addition, students are required to participate in co-curricular activities. These are managed by students with the teacher as facilitator/moderator.

The curriculum plan (learning competencies) does not present teaching methods and learning activities that teachers must follow in implementing the curriculum. The guiding philosophy is that the creativity of teachers is stimulated by the option to plan and use the appropriate teaching/learning activities independently. However, teacher’s manuals or guides do incorporate higher-level content areas and suggestions for teaching and assessing.” (See Mariñas & Ditapat, 2000).

The features that make the new 2002 curriculum for elementary and secondary education different from previous curricula (NESC and NSEC) are: (i) restructuring of the learning areas, reducing them to five (Filipino, English, science, mathematics and Makabayan); (ii) stronger integration of competencies and values within and across learning areas; (iii) greater emphasis on the learning process and integrative modes of teaching; and (iv) increased time for tasks to gain mastery of competencies of the basic tool subjects. The objectives are expressed in terms of competencies, which are knowledge, skills and attitudes that the learner is expected to acquire at the end of the programme. A significant feature of the competencies is the inclusion of the use of ICTs, articulated in terms of skills in accessing, processing, and applying information, and using educational software in solving mathematical problems and conducting experiments. Content is delivered using a variety of media and resources. The teaching-learning process considers the learner an active partner rather than an object of pedagogy. The learner takes on the role of constructor of meaning, while the teacher serves as facilitator, enabler and manager of learning. (Department of Education, 2002).

The weekly lesson timetables for elementary education (1999 and according to the 2002 basic education curriculum) are shown below:

Elementary education: weekly lesson timetable (1999)

Elementary education: weekly lesson timetable (2002 basic education curriculum)

The weekly lesson timetables for secondary education (1999 and according to the 2002 basic education curriculum) are shown below:

Secondary education: weekly lesson timetable

Secondary education: weekly lesson timetable (2002 basic education curriculum)