The Department of National Defense (DND) and the Department of Education (DepEd) are ready to jointly implement a two-year pilot program for the proposed mandatory Reserved Officers Training Corps (ROTC) in selected public high schools nationwide this coming school year, a ranking Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) official said Monday.
Appearing before the Senate Committee on Education, Arts and Culture, Brig. Gen. Rolando Rodil, commander of the AFP Reserve Command, said the pilot program will be called the Advanced Citizen Training Program (ACTP) and will be implemented in 100 public senior high schools nationwide.
The military official said the outlines of the Defense and Education departments started working on the pilot program after President Rodrigo Duterte mentioned mandatory ROTC as one of his priorities in his first state of the nation address (SONA) in 2016.
“After President Duterte’s first SONA, the DepEd and DND agreed to come out with a pilot program to ensure readiness in the full implementation of the program should the law be enacted,” Rodil told the committee.
He said a joint curriculum for the two years of the pilot implementation of the program in Grades 11-12 has already been formulated along with an estimated budget of PHP211 million.
Likewise, the 100 public senior high schools that will be part of the pilot implementation have already been identified.
All regions, except the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), would be represented in the pilot program.
“We came up with a draft memorandum of agreement (MOA) that was signed by the (DND and DepEd) Secretaries. It has not just taken off last semester but we plan to implement it in Grades 11 and 12 this coming school year,” Rodil said.
In the meantime, Rodil told the Senate the general concept on how ROTC will be administered as well as some key points of the measures and guidelines that will be implemented to address hazing, abuse and corruption in the conduct of the program.
He said that unlike previous ROTC courses, there will be no weekend training since it will become part of the education curriculum.
The exception would be only during practical exercises in military camps.
ROTC cadets would initially use ordinary P.E. uniforms during ROTC training, with a plan to later issue AFP military uniforms.
Grievance committee
To immediately address complaints of hazing, abuse and corruption, Rodil said a grievance committee will be established in each school.
While written complaints are required, the grievance committee would also consider anonymous complaints.
“We anticipate that some probably do not want to be initially identified. So anonymous complaints would not be immediately scrapped or dismissed by the committee. They will be evaluated for sufficiency,” Rodil said.
Additionally, reservists will be tapped to serve as ROTC instructors, with the DepEd providing counterparts through the creation of plantilla positions.
Rodil said the ROTC curriculum will be heavy on values formation and character building.
“We always subscribed to the belief that ROTC has been a very viable program of government to instill discipline, build character and to infuse the values that we should be infusing to our youth today, including nationalism and patriotism,” he said.
The AFP official added that parts of the ROTC module include developing leadership skills; civic consciousness, and community involvement; disaster preparedness; survival; and, life skills.
“We also like to instill basic military skills to lead, move, navigate, shoot and communicate -- the basic soldier skills that we like to impart to ROTC cadets,” Rodil said.
Law not needed
In the meantime, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian said he has nothing against the implementation of the ACTP since this will be implemented in the basic education level.
The chair of the Senate Committee on Education, Arts and Culture noted that the ACTP will just be like a curriculum that can be implemented by the DepEd in Grades 11 and 12.
“It would be just like a curriculum. We do not need a law for that since DepEd can make their own curriculum,” Gatchalian said in an interview after the hearing.
He, likewise, clarified that mandatory ROTC would be limited to the selected public senior high schools.
“ROTC will be mandatory only to the students in the 100 pilot testing schools, not in all senior high schools. The plan is to implement this 2019-2020 school year, but they also have to submit to us their strategy on how to implement it,” Gatchalian said.
As far as he is concerned, the lawmaker said his main concern is the safeguards to be implemented to curb past abuses.
“They are now talking how to implement it, how to roll it out. I am putting more emphasis on the safeguards because it is important that we have mechanisms that will penalize violators, as well as mechanisms that will investigate the problems that will arise in its implementation,” Gatchalian said.
http://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1066800
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.