FALSE: Duterte scraps K to 12 program

Claim: President Rodrigo Duterte has abolished the K to 12 program.Nine Facebook

users and pages posted statuses with similar claims that Duterte has scrapped the K
to 12 program. All of them included either the word “confirmed” or “officially” in
their posts.Rappler spotted these claims via Facebook Claim Check, the social
networking company’s tool dashboard that flags suspicious content shared on the
platform for fact checkers to review.

Based on Claim Check, there are at least 6 pages and 3 users that posted this claim
on their accounts that had at least a thousand shares.

The 6 pages are:

12:AM

Loneliness

Pakyo Ka

payt me

Sweet Message

A r c h 咯不

While the 3 users are:

Ūmm'ē Fārwāh

Shìt Pòśťèŕ

Laurence Cabal Malubay

The claims from these accounts combined had over 238,000 shares, 25,000
comments, and 34,000 reactions as of writing. All of them were posted on May 19,
2019.

Rating: FALSE

The Facts: The President has no power to repeal laws.

In May 2013, then-president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III signed Republic Act No.
10533 or the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013. The 1987 Constitution states
that the legislative power shall be vested in the Congress of the Philippines. This
means that the legislature, consisting of the Senate and the House of
Representatives, is the only authorized branch of government that can make, amend,
and repeal laws.
In a press briefing on Monday, May 20, Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo
said he has not heard anything about Duterte requesting the chamber to stop the
implementation of the K to 12 program.

The Supreme Court can also repeal an existing law by declaring it unconstitutional.
But the High Court already junked petitions to declare RA 10533 unconstitutional in
November 2018, saying that it is “an exercise of the State's police power.” (READ:
Supreme Court declares K-12 constitutional)

The Department of Education also issued a statement dispelling the claims on

Monday, May 20. “Sentiments and questions on social media pertaining to the
supposed plan to scrap the K to 12 Basic Education Program are clearly based on
misinformation and lack of critical discernment,” DepEd said.Out of the 9 Facebook
accounts that shared this information, only one of them indicated the basis of its
post in the comment section. Rappler reached out to the others but none of them
responded.

Facebook user Ūmm'ē Fārwāh, whose status received over 53,000 shares, pointed
to the May 15 article of DZXL 558 Manila of the Radio Mindanao Network as its
source.The article, however, only reported that Kabataan Representative Sarah Elago
filed a resolution urging the Duterte administration to stop the implementation of
the K to12 program.

“We have said time and again that the K to 12 program will not answer the
country's declining quality of education. In fact, Chairman De Vera's revelations
proved that this program only yielded more problems,” Elago said in a statement.No
action has been taken on that resolution.Elago filed the resolution after Commission
on Higher Education (CHED) Chair Prospero de Vera III revealed “defects” of the K to
12 Transition Program, such as delayed project implementation and instances of
project-based researchers not getting paid.

But for its part, CHED denied that it is calling for the revocation of the entire K to 12
program and clarified that they are only reviewing the transition aspect of it.DepEd
backed this up, saying: "The claims circulating online came after news of the CHED's
plan to ‘review and change’ the system for its K to 12 Transition Program was
misconstrued to mean the implementation of the entire K to 12 Program. These two
are not one and the same." – Pauline Macaraeg/Rappler.com

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