The Kindergarten to Grade 12 education program is constitutional, the Supreme Court has ruled.
The high court denied the consolidated petitions against Republic Act No. 10533 or the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013 and Republic Act No. 10157 or the Kindergarten Education Act, as well as the related issuances from the Commission on Higher Education and Department of Education.
“The Court, despite its vast powers, will not review the wisdom, merits, or propriety of governmental policies, but will strike them down only on either of two grounds: (1) unconstitutionality or illegality and/or (2) grave abuse of discretion,” the SC ruling stated.
“For having failed to show any of the above in the passage of the assailed law and the department issuances, the petitioners’ remedy thus lies not with the Court, but with the executive and legislative branches of the government.”
RA 10533 paved the way for the Philippines to switch to the K to 12 program from the old 10-year basic education system.
It was signed into law in 2013 by President Benigno Aquino III.
Kindergarten was institutionalized as part of the basic education system under RA 10157.
The high court also lifted the temporary restraining order issued April 21, 2015 on the exclusion of Filipino and Panitikan as core college courses.
The petitioners earlier said the K-12 program “denied the school’s students the education they are entitled to as gifted and talented learners.”
They also said Congress violated the students’ rights to due process, to equal protection, and to select a course of study when it crafted RA 10533, “by unfairly and unreasonably requiring them to attend two additional years of senior high school as a pre-condition to entry to college.”
