YOUTH activists on Friday condemned a proposal issued last week by the largest business group in the country to amend the curriculum of the K to 12 program of the Department of Education which pertains to the required number of hours of on-the job training a Grade 12 student must fulfill to graduate from Senior High School.
Under the proposal of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the on-the-job training manhour requirements for Senior High students must be increased from 80 to 800, allegedly to make them “work-ready” upon graduation.
In a statement, the Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan (Spark) criticized the business group, calling its proposal “an outright attempt to siphon more free labor from K to 12 students for them to profit from.”
Back in 2015, the PCCI collaborated with the DepEd in initiating the integration of dual training program in the K to 12 curriculum to address gripes of the business sector—graduates of the Philippine education system are not in tune with the skills required by industries.
“The PCCI was part of those who formulated the internship program for their member-companies to benefit from and now they want to expand it more and turn students to slaves,” the group said.
“Despite being on its pilot stage and has not yet produced graduates, the PCCI is aggressively engaged in conditioning the public to claim that the present OJT program is insufficient,” the group said.
“Such a proposal would only make the job market more competitive, wages more depressing and will rationalize other unjust employment practices such as casualization and contractualization,” Spark said.
Critical of the K -12 program, Spark believed the PCCI proposal proves “that the K to 12 law is a deed of sale between the big capitalist corporations and the government, treating K to 12 graduates as mere commodities for capital acquisition. This exploitative scheme is a blatant dehumanization of the students which reduces their labor as mere capital.”
The group claimed such proposal was additional proof that the educational system in the country remained “commercialized, neoliberal, and exploitative in nature.”