DepEd Calabarzon makes headway in SHS implementation

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MANILA — A Department of Education (DepEd) official said on Thursday that the positive results of the the Senior High School (SHS) program’s two-year implementation nationwide can be attributed to DepEd Calabarzon’s accomplishment.

In an interview with the Philippine News Agency (PNA), DepEd 4-A Regional Director Diosdado San Antonio said that Region 4-A (Calabarzon) is the biggest among the 17 regions in the country which implemented the SHS program, hence “their failure could have influenced the nationwide result of the program”.

“Calabarzon, we’re ahead but I didn’t say successful, more than 15 percent out of every 100 SHS graduates in the whole country is from our region…If DepEd is claiming SHS as successful, it wouldn’t be like that if the Calabarzon failed, that’s the challenge when we’re starting, our region will make or unmake senior high school program because we’re big.”

San Antonio credited the “success’ of the SHS implementation in their region to a local multi-sectoral committee that supported them from the beginning.

“I’d like to claim that we were able to surmount the challenges because we’re the only region with a multi-sectoral committee which has been converted into a regular committee by the regional development council…quarterly we meet, discuss and address concerns so that is one of the strengths,” he said.

San Antonio added that the different industries in their region were supportive of the SHS program.

“Even the industries in our region helped us contextualize the educational materials, they told us which skills must be developed in the students, they covered the cost and the instructional materials were put together…

Also, the local government units, private sectors and cooperatives provided space for the work immersion of the students,” he said.

Referring to their data last month, San Antionio said 3,533 of the 18,000 SHS graduates in their region were provided jobs by their work immersion hosts since most of them have the National Certification of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority.

“There are no exact names yet which specific industries absorbed the students but in our researches, consultations there are already export processing zones which have established their own Senior High Schools, inooffer nila yung kelangan na skills ng locators (they offer the skills needed by the locator), first batch of students this year will be scholars…and around 500 SHS graduates want to put up their own businesses,” he said.

Despite all these good news, San Antonio said that a significant number of grade 11 students discontinued going to Grade 12 this coming school year.

“We’re still determining their status if they now have work or they got married, the field is still gathering data,” he said.