DepEd Academic Tracks in Senior High School: What Were They For Anyway?

What was the academic track system meant to do, and why is the DepEd streamlining them into two?

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” – the question any parent asks their kids. Depending on our kids’ answers, we try our best to steer them in the right direction. Besides exposing them to people and activities related to their career of choice, we enroll them in the academic track tailored best to their career when our kids reach senior high school. However, the DepEd mentioned two weeks ago that they were streamlining the Academic Track system. So, what happened?

What was the PH’s Academic Track System meant to do?

Like any change made to the curriculum, it was meant to do one thing: to make Filipinos more globally competitive in the job market. Besides the K-12 system supposedly creating more members in the workforce, DepEd supplemented it with the academic tracks system in senior high school, which would make the learning more specialized. There would be four tracks or strands, as some would call them. These would be Accountancy, Business, and Management (ABM), Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), Humanities and Social Sciences (HUMSS), and General Academics (GA).

Exposing kids to various subjects early on was supposed to make the transition to college easier. The learning curve in terms of difficulty would be more gradual, and if the families could not afford to send their kids to college, the kids would have enough to at least hold a job somewhere. Even for an Alternative Learning System (ALS) student.

How Parents Responded To The Academic Track System

Back in our day, we only chose our academic track when we hit college. High School was for fooling around and figuring out the rest of our social skills before we met the rest of the world.

Besides, some of us will probably remember not even using our college degrees at all. We probably had a change of heart mid-way, leaving our degrees to be more indirectly related to our actual careers. But when the academic track system came out, some of us were okay with it. In a way, it prompted us to really sit down with the kids and help them figure out what they wanted to do with their futures.

But with technology developing so quickly, it’s no surprise that a lot of us shoved our kids into the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) track. That meant a lot of math and science, even some of the lessons being supposedly an overview of college-level math. We steered our kids there, thinking, “Hey, this is where the money is! Become this!”

However, kids don’t just roll over and accept that kind of thing.

How The Kids Responded To The Academic Track System

Unfortunately, like any system, it would not be without its kinks. Because the academic tracks system’s goal was specialization, it was “overstuffed” with courses and lessons that teachers and parents would struggle to learn, understand, and teach (Kilag et. al, 2020). Together with the pressure of time and outside influences insisting on a particular career path (Nazareno et. al, 2021), many students would find themselves resorting to self-study, which would eventually lead to academic burnout, clinical depression, and clinical anxiety (Depaynos, Butala, Atompag, 2021; Patosa and Oclinaria, 2023).

The increasing academic pressure would also teach our kids the saying, “work smarter, not harder.” Artificial Intelligence (AI) like ChatGPT, Gemini, and DeepSeek became our kids’ safety net, helping them prioritize subjects in the track that they actually wanted to learn. Some would beg their parents to hire a tutor, but these tutors would eventually become “shadow teachers” who would feed them the answers (Montebon, 2016; Lualhati, 2019). Originally, shadow teachers were for kids with autism, ADHD, or various learning delays. However, neurotypical kids began needing these shadow teachers also because of what they felt was a never-ending onslaught of academic work (Manansala and Dizon, 2008; Hamid, 2020; Aristya and Sowiyah, 2024; Buenrostro-Jocson, 2024).

Thus, the DepEd decided to reduce the original four tracks into two: academic and technical professional. They do so in hopes that it reduces the academic load but allows students more academic freedom, granting more opportunities for more well-rounded learning and creative thinking. Fifteen core subjects would be reduced to five, and the electives would be more streamlined. But the hours spent teaching the subject may be a bit stricter, according to the DepEd packet.

Constant evolution of education

Education is always changing. Schools as much as they want to teach kids, are still a business entity. They’ll always find a way to make their curriculum better than the other. But hopefully with the new guidelines, the school year won’t feel as overstuffed. There’ll be a little more breathing space for the kids to be more flexible as they realize the value of both hard (e.g. math, science) and soft (e.g. writing and drawing) skills in everyday life. Besides, we want our kids to be able to adapt to life’s constant changes. So the academic tracks need to be just the same.

The DepEd also opened its papers for the public to review. For parents who have kids entering Senior High school, you can check out their packet here.

References

Aristya, F. S., & Sowiyah, R. R. (2024). The Role of Shadow Teacher in Inclusive School: A Literature Review. International Journal of Current Science Research and Review, 7(01), 602-608.

Buenrostro-Jocson, J. S. (2024). Special education and shadow teaching: Practices and experiences in the Philippines. In The Southeast Asian Conference on Education 2024. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Janine-Buenrostro/publication/380109292_Special_Education_and_Shadow_Teaching_Practices_and_Experiences_in_the_Philippines/links/66542662479366623a165ab3/Special-Education-and-Shadow-Teaching-Practices-and-Experiences-in-the-Philippines.pdf

Depaynos, J. L., Butala, G. M. B., & Atompag, S. M. (2021). Academic Stress Of academic track senior high school students. International Journal of Education and Pedagogy, 3(1), 93-111.

Hamid, A. (2020). Role of Shadow Teacher in the provision of Academic and Social Support for Children with Special Needs at Inclusive Schools. JIE, 4(1).

Kilag, O. K. T., Dejino, J. A., Arcillo, M. T., Borong, M. L., Manligoy, R. G., & Combista, L. I. (2023). Exploring the Determinants of Senior High School Track Preference among Grade 10 Students: A Comprehensive Study. Online Submission, 2(6), 31-42.

Lualhati, G. P. (2019). Discovering Filipino intermediate pupils’ attitude towards shadow education: Private tutoring and its implications. International Journal of Recent Innovations in Academic Research, 3(3), 255-261.

Manansala, M. A., & Dizon, E. I. (2008). Shadow teaching scheme for children with autism and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder in regular schools. Education quarterly, 66(1).

Montebon, D. R. T. (2016). Shadow education: Effects on students’ self-efficacy in science. International Journal of Research Studies in Education, 5(1), 31-40.

Nazareno, A., Lopez-Relente, M. J. F., Gestiada, G. A., Martinez, M. P., De Lara, M. L. D., & Roxas-Villanueva, R. M. (2021). Factors associated with career track choice of senior high school students. Philippine Journal of Science, 150(5), 1043-1060.

Patosa, C. A. B., & Oclinaria, A. V. (2023). Academic Stressors Among STEM Students in Transitional Face-to-Face Classes.

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