essay about senior high school in the philippines

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Senior High School in the Philippines: An Overview

The Department of Education’s K to 12 program has already produced three batches of senior high school graduates since its initial implementation back in 2012. Despite that, many students and parents included are still not sure how senior high school works and why it has been included in our revised education system. If you happened to be one of them or know someone who is, here’s a short overview of senior high school in the Philippines that we hope can be of help.

Completion of senior high school is a requirement for college admission, so if you’re aiming to study a four or five-year degree program in college, finishing senior high school is a must.

Aside from that, senior high school also allows students to study general education subjects that they wouldn’t have otherwise studied until their first or second year in college — giving them more time to dig deeper into their chosen specialization should they eventually decide to pursue higher education.

This could play an important role if you intend to pursue jobs in countries where companies require a minimum of 16 years of formal education (as opposed to our 14 years under the old educational system) to qualify for employment. The same also goes for those interested in pursuing a master’s or doctor’s degree overseas where a lot of academic institutions also require the 16-year minimum.

If you’re thinking of skipping college and joining the workforce as soon as possible, senior high school also offers a faster way to earn Certificates of Competencies (COCs) and National Certificates (NC) from TESDA that you can use to apply for both local and overseas jobs that require a particular set of skills.

If you prefer to be your own boss instead of working for someone else, you can also use the things that you’ll learn from the TVL / TLE track to learn the basics of running a small business including but not limited to operations, financial management, and customer relations.

Senior high school stretches over two academic years — grades 11 and 12 — composed of two semesters each. Each semester is subdivided into 29 mandatory and 2 elective subjects that each take 80 hours to complete (with the exception of PE and Health which only take 20 hours each).

Career Tracks and Learning Strands

The senior high school program is broken down into career tracks and learning strands . The career tracks refer to the general categories that the different fields of study belong to while the learning strands refer to the different areas of expertise under the program. Currently, there are 4 career tracks (Academic, Arts and Design, Sports, and TVL / TLE) and 8 learning strands (ABM, STEM, HUMMS, GAS, Home Economics, ICT, Agri-fishery Arts, and Industrial Arts).

Curriculum Breakdown

The senior high school curriculum is composed of a total of 31 subjects — 15 of which are part of the core subjects that every student will take regardless of their chosen career track (with the exception of Earth Science and Disaster Readiness and Risk Reduction which are only for students taking the STEM strand), 7 applied or contextualized subjects which are also taken by every student regardless of their chosen track but are slightly modified to suit individual specializations better, and 9 specialized subjects that are, for the most part, exclusively taken by students who chose that particular career track and learning strand (with the exception of subjects under the HUMSS strand which can be taken as electives by students taking other career tracks and learning strands.

Choosing a Career Track

The career track that you will be taking in senior high school can depend on the result of your NCAE and the pre-admission screening of the senior high school that you intend to enroll at.

For example, anyone can choose to pursue the ABM, HUMMS, and General Academic strands along with the various strands under the TVL / TLE tracks regardless of NCAE results; however, a final grade of 85 percent in both Math and Science is required to qualify for the STEM strand as well as a percentile rank of 86 and above in the STEM subtest of the NCAE.

For the sports and arts and design tracks, students have to score a percentile rank of 51 and above in their corresponding subtests as well as pass the skills test that will be administered by the school that they wish to enroll at.

Availability of Career Tracks and Learning Strands

Due to limited resources, not all senior high schools can offer the tracks outlined in the program.

Instead, the availability of career tracks will be determined based on the available senior high schools’ ability to provide the equipment and facilities necessary for a certain career track as well as the specific demands of the community that they are operating in.

For example, certain subjects under the STEM strand requires a science laboratory while certain subjects under the Sports track may require specific sports equipment.

Demand wise, the Agri-fishery Art strand is more likely to be offered in a senior high school operating in a coastal community or a farming area, so is the Information and Communication Technology strand in highly urbanized areas where technology companies are known to operate.

Schools That Offer Senior High School

Not all schools are allowed to offer senior high school in the Philippines. In order to be able to do so, interested schools must first get the Department of Education’s permission by meeting certain requirements.

Enrolling at a senior high school not authorized by the DepEd can result to your diploma being declared as invalid, so it’s important that you consult the list of schools authorized to offer senior high school in the Philippines before applying.

Tuition Fees

Just like in college, tuition fee for senior high school may vary per school. The Department of Education offers vouchers that incoming senior high school students can use to enroll in their public or private senior high school of choice, the value of which can range between 8,750 PHP to 22, 500 PHP per year depending on the type of junior high school that they graduated from and the area where their senior high school of choice is located.

It is worth noting, however, that while the voucher can be used to enroll in both public and private schools and is typically enough to cover a large portion of the tuition fee or even more in the former, this can only cover a small portion of the tuition fee in a lot of the latter, so you might want to do some digging around first to get an idea of exactly how much you would need to pay for before you send in your enrollment application.

Additional Concerns

Do you have any other SHS question or other concerns about senior high school in general? You may get in touch with the Department of Education by calling (02) 636 1663 | 633 1942 or (+63) 919 456 0027 or by e-mailing [email protected] . You can also visit them at their official website http://www.deped.gov.ph/k-to-12/

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Importance of Senior High School in the Philippines

June 2016 saw the monumental change in the educational system in the Philippines. Nearly 1.5 million students across the country eagerly picked up their bags and headed towards the first day of the Philippines’ Senior High School.

This was a change that had long been in development by the Department of Education. The basic education curriculum, which starts from kindergarten and now culminates with senior high school (also known as grades 11 and 12), was extensively planned and reviewed to ensure that the additional 60,000 teachers and classrooms needed were all set and ready for students once the new school year opened.

This ambitious change was done to align the country’s education system with the education systems of most other countries around the world and to raise national competitiveness. Previously, the Philippines was one of only three countries in the world with a 10-year education system. With the new K-12 system, the Department of Education can ensure that Filipinos are given the necessary skills needed to become productive members of society. The push towards a K-12 system was also deemed necessary because overseas Filipino workers have been losing out to migrant workers from other countries due to our shorter basic education cycle. Due to the fact that nearly 18% of the average Filipino family’s income comes from overseas remittances, it was an issue not to be taken lightly.

Along with supporters of this reform came its critics, however. Many argued that despite its benefits, many people, particularly the poor, could not afford to send their children to school for an additional two more years.

Despite this, studies have shown that extended access to schooling have resulted to positive gains. In the Philippines, reforms done in the early 1980s that increased access to education, elimination tuition fees, and adding more schools all proved beneficial to students. The results have led to increases in educational attainment of around 15% a year as compared to the previous average of 8% a year.

These positive developments were noticed in other countries as well. In the United Kingdom, a change in the minimum school leaving age, wherein children were required to stay in school for an additional year, resulted in positive gains, mirroring results gained earlier from Canada and the United States. Similar results were also noticed by participants of the extension of compulsory schooling in Venezuela in the 1980s. Based on initial calculations, an additional two years of secondary schooling in the Philippines is seen to have positive results. A 2013 labor force survey shows that workers with incomplete tertiary education had 17% additional annual return as compared to over and above secondary school completers.

This proves that despite the additional spending the two years of senior high school will entail, the extra years of schooling will bring about big benefits for the students. While it goes without saying that every new investment new comes with risks, these kinds of returns show better promise that other investment opportunities.

The introduction of specializations in senior high school (through tracks and strands) help provide students with an edge once they apply for either college or the workforce once they graduate from senior high school. Allowing students to choose a strand and track lets them hone in on a field they are passionate about, enabling them to lead a fulfilled life by training them in their chosen career paths. The Philippine government believes that the reforms done to the educational system will put students at par with the graduates from countries all around the world. By investing in our education, we can reach national growth and world-class development.

AMA University Online Education (AMAOEd) is an online SHS education platform in the Philippines.

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Reading and Writing Needs of Senior High School Students: The Case of Filipino Students in the Philippines

Modern Journal of Studies in English Language Teaching and Literature

The present study sought to determine the current skills, competencies, and needs of the Senior High School (SHS) students in a public school in Metro Manila, Philippines, regarding academic reading and writing through needs analysis (NA). The NA uses two approaches: (1) present situation analysis (PSA), with a purpose of pointing out the English proficiency of students and their level in reading and writing in the second language at the onset of the course (Dudley-Evans & St Johns, 1998; Robinson, 1991 as cited in Ibrahim, 2016), and (2) learning needs analysis (LNA), which is referred to as, “what the learner needs to do to learn” (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987 as cited in Ibrahim, 2016, p.2). The researchers conducted a survey among 100 SHS students and triangulated the results through an item analysis of Reading and Writing diagnostic test administered to the participants and interview sessions with three English teachers, seven diagnostic test high scorers, and seven students with ...

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Senior high school students struggle to write in English – report

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This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

MANILA, Philippines – ”Some senior high school students (SHS) cannot even write a decent English sentence.”

An article by the think tank Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) on Monday, April 20, said SHS difficulty in writing in English was particularly evident in research projects. 

According to Kristel Brillantes, consultant at PIDS, students were submitting projects for compliance only, preventing them from applying their learning from the SHS curricula. 

Brillantes described the current SHS curricula as “too ambitious” and was designed for urban students such as science schools in Metro Manila.

The article said that this led to another problem such as understanding activities “further worsened by lack of resources.”

It also cited the lack of computers of some students which made it hard for them to understand and join the discussion on their computer literacy subject.

The article also noted that even teachers faced challenges teaching students due to “insufficient guidelines, inadequate materials, and preparations.”

“Students are decrying the ‘too much’ reporting, which made them feel they teach more than their teachers do,” the article said.  

Aside from the difficulty faced by students in writing in English, the report also raised the concern about students balancing between academics and sports or arts classes.

“On top of their regular academic programs, the athletes, for instance, still need to join different activities, such as sports competitions, to expose them to opportunities outside SHS,” Brillantes said in the article. 

The students, according to the report, developed sentiments that teachers and students looked down on them because they are “not smart enough” for being under the sports track. 

“DepEd should help them understand why there has to be different SHS tracks, as it is currently unclear to both the students and the teachers, leading to bias against those pursuing sports and arts tracks,” Brillanes said as quoted in the article.

Meanwhile, the report also said that these problems were “mere birth pains” of the SHS program. Brillantes then called on the Department of Education and other agencies involved, such as the Commission on Higher Education and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, “to iron out policies related to SHS.” (READ:  [OPINION] Why senior high school needs urgent fixing )

What do you think can be done to improve the SHS curriculum in the country? Let us know in the comments below! – Rappler.com

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