REVISITING the Senior High School (SHS) program is not just an academic exercise. It is a civic and moral duty, especially for those who have walked the long corridors of curriculum implementation. Having served as Associate Principal and later as Principal of the Ateneo de Iloilo during the initial rollout of SHS, I have lived through the promises, pains, and paradoxes of this bold national educational reform. It was a privilege and a test of conviction, patience, and clarity to co-pilot a pioneering team. Not everything handed down made sense. Some policies were brilliant on paper but clumsy in practice. Others we had to tweak, discard, or reinvent, always grounded on a simple principle: education must serve the learner, not the system.
The recent proposal of DepEd to cut down SHS core subjects from 15 to five may sound radical, but it is not an entirely new insight. For years, classroom practitioners and administrators have flagged how bloated, fragmented, and inconsistent the SHS curriculum has become. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) consultation confirmed what many of us already knew from the ground. When too many subjects are squeezed into limited hours, depth becomes a casualty. Students memorize to survive, not to learn. Teachers juggle too many objectives, unable to dive deeper where it matters. Streamlining may help, but only if it is driven by local context and long-term purpose, not by international benchmarks alone.
After all, the purpose of SHS was never to add two more years. It was to give our youth a head start in college, work, or entrepreneurship. According to the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), however, only 20% of SHS graduates find work aligned with their specialization. At the same time, most still go on to college despite the intent of SHS to be a terminal option for some (PIDS, 2023). The irony is that many students still feel unprepared for college, and employers remain underwhelmed by SHS graduates. We missed the mark somewhere. It is not about more subjects but making the right subjects matter more.
Ateneo de Iloilo faced a similar dilemma up until I retired in 2022. Did we follow every template detail or honor the learner first? We chose the latter. We revised our course offerings to include more contextualized subjects and electives, such as reflection-action inspired Ignatian Spirituality, contextualized research, interdisciplinary entrepreneurial program, actual problem-based feasibility study, student-led leadership engagements, hands-on internship experience, and international career exposure. We treated the curriculum as a living document, not a set of commandments. There were gray areas, of course. But those gray areas became sites of innovation. When students worked on real-world community problems instead of standard modules, their learning made sense. And when learning makes sense, it sticks.
DepEd’s proposal to reduce the track (from four to two — Academic and Teaching Professional or TechPro), remove strands, and allow electives across nine clusters is a step toward learner agency. It breaks the rigidity that has boxed students into academic ghettos. But it also calls for careful scaffolding. Choice is not automatically empowerment. Students must be guided to make informed decisions based on their goals, capacities, and contexts. If an incoming Grade 11 student from a rural school chooses ICT or Industrial Arts and Maritime electives, what support systems will be in place to make that decision viable? Will there be qualified teachers? Facilities? Industry partners? Flexibility must not translate to abandonment. (To be continued)/PN
