No such thing as Grade 13, but DepEd hit for bridging program

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Education (DepEd) has clarified that it has no proposal for an additional year — Grade 13 — in the current K-12 system, but lawmakers still scolded it for having a bridging program that creates an additional stumbling block for students.



During a hearing of the House of Representatives’ committee on basic education and culture on Monday, Pasig City Rep. Roman Romulo, who heads the panel, asked Education Assistant Secretary Janir Datukan whether it was true that DepEd was implementing Grade 13 for the school year 2025-2026, which the official denied.

However, later on, Romulo called out DepEd for still maintaining a bridging program — a short supplementary or remedial course that would prepare K-12 graduates for tertiary programs. He pointed out that the K-12 program itself should be sufficient to prepare students.

Knock on K-12 program

According to Romulo, having a bridging program is a knock on the efficacy of the K-12 program because even before this was adopted, graduates of four-year high school programs were already deemed ready for tertiary education. However, when the K-12 added two more years to the high school program, they were suddenly not ready anymore.

“As an example, there are universities and colleges where, if you want to enter their engineering courses, they require students to go through the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) strand. Is that fair? So at grade 10, after grade 10, the students have to decide already?” he asked in a mix of English and Filipino.

“Is that fair? Is that something that should have been corrected a long time ago? We should have been fair to our students. Before, if you graduated from the fourth year of high school, you were ready for everything. But why is that when we added two more years, suddenly they were not ready?” he added.

Program still there despite denial

Discussions on the bridging program started when Romulo asked Datukan about his statement that the DepEd was no longer implementing bridging programs. Romulo and Marikina 2nd District Rep. Stella Quimbo then counterchecked with the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd), which in turn said that it was still there.

“College readiness, this one struck me the most. You mentioned something earlier about no longer having bridging programs with this new curriculum that you have... What is your guarantee that we no longer have bridging programs? Because it was you, DepEd, who said this. What is your guarantee to us and all students that there are no bridging programs for the college level?” Romulo asked.

“We’re in constant communication and coordination, Mr. Chair, with CHEd, and we’re still developing the entire program, including Grade 12 exiting to higher education, to college... Our discussion, our agreement, Mr. Chair, [is that there are] no more bridging programs,” Datukan replied.

CHEd Director Edizon Fermin said that, while they were moving towards the goal of removing bridging programs, the program was retained, which he said was due to a yearning of some higher educational institutions (HEIs) for K-12 graduates to be at par with discussions at the college level.

“So my disposition personally is yes, there shouldn't be any bridging... So that's the same thing that we communicated to them that CHEd is working on,” Fermin said.

“In our discussions since October of 2024, the premise has been that there should be no bridging... For us, we’re working towards the goal of not having bridging.”

“So it’s not done yet?  It’s not yet definite?” Romulo asked.

“Still not through, Mr. Chair, because the start of the zonal public consultations on the impact of senior high school on GE [general education] is on Friday. That is with the Visayas cluster,” Fermin replied.

Failure of K-12?

Romulo then asked Fermin if continuing a bridging program was an indication of failure of the K-12 system in getting students ready for college.

“Our definition of bridging — and that’s what I found in my capacity as chair for GE — is that there is an admission test for each university and college. So, since other students do not reach the cutoff score, they are mandated to go through a bridging program. But this is not true to all HEIs, but we see a pattern,” Fermin said.

“So, Sir Fermin, based on your response, this is another statement saying that K-12 failed to make all its students college-ready. Because we still have to do bridging?” Romulo asked.

“It appears, Mr. Chair, yes,” Fermin replied.

The K-12 program was implemented during the administration of then-President Benigno Aquino III in response to a problem that Filipino workers lacked two years of basic academic experience.

This is because many countries operated on a 13-year pre-university program — one year for kindergarten, six years of elementary school, four years of junior high school, and two years of senior high.

But over the years, there have been calls to revamp the K-12 system as some experts believe the additional two years did not address the bad performance of Filipino students compared to those in neighboring countries.

A United Nations Children’s Fund report in 2023 stressed the need to “harness the potential” of early childhood education as it was discovered that in Southeast Asia alone, the Philippines’ Grade 5 students’ reading and math skills were second-worst, even behind war-torn Myanmar.

READ: Southeast Asia rank: PH 2nd to worst in Grade 5 students' reading, math skills

In December 2023, the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) said that Filipino students who took part in their assessment were five to six years behind in mathematics, science, and reading compared to their 15-year-old counterparts in most of the participating countries. /atm

(2025/05/19-15:29)