SEAMEO INNOTECH LOOKS INTO PHILIPPINE DIFFERENTIATED SECONDARY SCHOOLS

To be able to benchmark the secondary education curricula of schools offering Science, Arts, and Technical/Vocation education programs, SEAMEO INNOTECH conducted a round table forum on differentiated secondary schools in the Philippines last February 22. The forum was done as a follow-up activity to the Experts’ Meeting on Basic Education Curriculum in Southeast Asia conducted earlier to compare curricula across Southeast Asia. In the experts’ meeting, one of the findings was that the Philippines has a different curriculum structure as it does not offer streams in Science, Arts, and Technical/Vocational education. However, although it lacks these streams, Philippine basic education has a number of differentiated secondary schools that offer a special curriculum be similar to what other Southeast Asian countries offer. For the round table forum, the participants shared their respective schools’ existing curriculum, school organization, and school calendar; core and elective subjects; annual budget; assessment for admission and learning; teacher requirements and qualifications; and issues and challenges they face as a differentiated school. Both the experts meeting and the round table forum were done for the research study “Adequacy, Structure and Duration of Philippine Formal Primary and Secondary Education: Towards Defining Content of the Additional Two Years in Basic Education.”