The Department of Education (DepEd) will launch the newly-revised K to 10 curriculum in "a few weeks’ time", Education Undersecretary Michael Poa said on Tuesday.

In a Palace briefing, Poa said the review shows the need to decongest the K to 10 curriculum to improve the quality of basic education.

"In K to 10 review, since were done with that, the feedback of the experts is that it the current K to 12 is highly congested it means the students need to learn a lot of learning competencies within a school year, there are a lot that the teacher also need to teach within the school year which makes mastery of the subjects very difficult," he said.

"In order to improve the quality of basic education we decongest the K to 10 curriculum. We will allot more time for the fundamentals such as Math, Science, English, Reading and of course the values formation subjects," he added.

Poa noted that while the review of the revised K to 10 curriculum was completed, the Department of Education is still working on the review of the K to 12 program.

"For the senior high school curriculum which is Grades 11 and 12, it (review) continues. We are reviewing it at the moment. It just started last November. We just formed a national task force to review that, of course the aim as we’ve always been saying that when it comes to senior high school is to align the curriculum with industry demand," he said.

"As we always say the promise of K to 12 is to make the learners employable but we have to admit it doesn't happen right now. So, we are looking at ways to align that into industry demands to boost employability, and attract our learners to be employed," he added. Robina Asido/DMS