Senior high school

In June 2016, Senior High School (SHS) will be compulsory for all Filipino students leaving Grade 10. Before we praise, condemn, welcome, or fear it, we should be sure to understand what exactly SHS is.

The first thing to do is to go to the website of the Department of Education (www.deped.gov.ph) and search for “Senior High School,” or go directly to www.deped.gov.ph/k-to-12/about/faq/private-senior-high-school.

Go to the last question on the FAQ page, namely, “How flexible will the private SHSs be allowed to enhance in terms of their proposed SHS Program? Can a school propose new SHS tracks and strands which are not found in the SHS Curriculum released?”

Here is the official answer from DepEd: “The guidelines on the SHS Curriculum will detail the standards of the said curriculum. Private schools may be allowed to go over and beyond the standards for the specific SHS track or strand. In case applicants plan to offer other specialized programs to cater to community and industry requirements, the applicant may propose new strands for a specific SHS track provided that they present other necessary SHS provisions to ensure readiness of their intended SHS.”

Why am I starting an explanation of the rules about SHS by citing the exceptions? Because we have to look at SHS from the correct perspective. If we think of it as yet another imposition by an impersonal government bureaucracy that treats everybody the same way, we will miss the whole point of adding two years to our basic education cycle.

The whole point of the entire K to 12 reform is to answer the needs of about 30 million young people (those below 24 years of age) who have not finished Fourth Year High School. Of the out-of-school youth (OSY) of employable age, more than six million are unemployed, primarily because they do not have the skills that employers want.

Since these employable skills cannot be acquired within only ten years of education (not to mention that, after Fourth Year or Grade 10, students will only be 16 years old and not yet fully employable), we added two years of free public education. These two years should not have more of the same things they are supposed to learn in the first ten years (11 now with compulsory Kindergarten). Rather, they are focused primarily on employable or entrepreneurial skills. (Students who can afford private schools need not worry about employable skills when they are 16 years old; unlike the poor, they can afford to spend another four years learning a profession.)

Now, employable skills are not the same for all the regions in the country. It is not very useful for all the students in Quezon City, for example, to spend hours learning deep sea fishing. Clearly, employable skills vary according to the needs of a community. These needs may be current (employers are looking for employees) or future (the country should eventually become the center of analytics, so studying analytics is a good bet).

Poverty, however, should not be a reason for a student not to pursue a profession. There are college scholarships available, of course, but definitely not for all poor students (roughly half the population, according to the SWS). There must be a systemic way to give poor students a chance to go to college at some point in their lives. First, we have to give them the skills they need to make a living. Then, if they save enough money and are motivated enough, then they can go to college and take board exams and the rest of it.

That is the reason the curriculum of SHS has to devote enough time for students to be prepared for college entrance examinations. In our country, that means being able to fulfill the College Readiness Standards mandated by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED).

We can now see that the SHS curriculum consists basically of two parts: one part that gives students skills for immediate employment or entrepreneurship, and another part that gives students the academic preparation for college.

Since those of us who are older than 24 had only ten years of basic education and did not fare so badly in college, we could argue that SHS is not necessary. But that was before the College Readiness Standards were formulated. The College Readiness Standards demand a lot more of someone entering college today than during our time. Just one obvious example: the College Readiness Standards demand that a student entering first year engineering should already know Calculus.

The part of the SHS that gives all students the basic academic preparation demanded by the College Readiness Standards is called the “Core Subjects.” The part that gives students the skills needed by employers or needed if they set up their own businesses is called the “Track Subjects.” The Track Subjects are of two kinds: “Applied Track Subjects” and “Specialized Subjects.”

These subjects are not the same for everybody in every part of the country. It all depends, as the DepEd website explicitly puts it, on community and industry requirements. (To be continued)