Writing POC 101

Filipino Characters - @skyline

I'm going to shed some light in the concept of the Philippine education system. Just so people wouldn't be confused as to why some people who are as young as sixteen are already in their first year of uni.

So here's the thing, at first, our basic education system consists of only ten years (excluding the pre-elementary stages, but I'll get to that). We have the elementary school or grade school, and then we have high school.

PART ONE: Elementary School.

Elementary/Grade school is split into two: Primary and Intermediate. In the Primary level of grade school, you have first graders, second graders, and lastly third graders. This level of educational system is not really that hard. As far as I can remember we are only given the subjects: Language, Reading, Science, Makabayan, Math, Values (or Religion, for my school since I'm studying in a Catholic school, it's called Christian Living), Computer, and Filipino. English is separated into two (Language and Reading) so it wouldn't be too much for the 1st-3rd graders to take in. Reading focuses more on the reading comprehension, meanwhile Language focuses on spelling, and different figures of speech. Makabayan is History and Social Studies and Geography of the Philippines all in one. In just one subject we talk about a lot of stuff about the Philippines and it's crammed up into one subject. As for Filipino, this is also to help us learn our language better. It's like the same concept of Reading and Language, only in here, it's in one subject. Meanwhile, in the Computer subject, they teach us all about how to power up computers and use it. As far as I can remember, back in first grade, we were being told to play games like Mr. Potato Head and and I'm not sure about the other game but it was hella rad.

In the Intermediate level we get the fourth, fifth, and sixth graders.

Now here comes the Intermediate level. In here we still have the same seven subjects: Language, Reading, Science, HEKASI (Makabayan for Primary level), Math, Values, Computer and Filipino. But this time, they added two more subjects which is HELE, and MAPEH. HELE stands for Home Economics and Livelihood Education, whilst MAPEH stands for Music Arts and Physical Education. For the main subjects, it's basically just the same on what was taught to us in Primary, only it's a tad bit more difficult. In my school, we were taught about basic algebra at like sixth grade, and let me tell you this, it was so hard I cried during our math exam. For the HELE, here they taught us how to cook, what are the different kinds of indigenous materials found in our country, and they teach us how to make handicrafts. For MAPEH, it's pretty much obvious on what are the stuff taught to us.

So complete all these six grades and you'll graduate and then move on to high school.

PART TWO: HIGH SCHOOL.

High School here is somehow different than the high schools in other countries. For the main part, we are not allowed to pick our classes. We have to make do with the schedule given to us. For four years, we have to deal with the subjects given to us and we can't drop one of those subjects, no matter how hard it may seem. The subjects are the same, really. Just with different names and all. And this time, we have enrichment subjects or electives. One per level.

So yeah, in High School we are required to have Physical Education for four years. But unlike in other countries, we are not required to play sports or something. We are not forced to like run five laps or something in the track or like play volleyball and basketball. Yes, we are taught about the basic rules and game play of these two sports, we are allowed to play them for like one or two sessions just to learn them, but other than that, PE is not entirely sports to us. We learn different stuff at PE, like how to ballroom dance, and how to officiate different sports and how to play board games like Chess and Game of the Generals (I think it's a board game that only exists here in the PH). AAAAAnd now I'm rambling about PE. Whoa.

But like we need to complete these four years in order to graduate and move on to college.

Seen that yet? Yes, we graduate at every level. But like now, in High school, our subjects are separated into like different branches. For English, we learn about Philippine literature in first year, next we learn about Afro-Asian, next is English and American Lit, and then lastly it's about World lit (i think?) and Greek Mythology. For AP (Araling Panlipunan which is also ike HEKASI and MAKABAYAN), we learn about Philippine history in first year, Asian history in second year, and world history in third year, and Economics for fourth year. In Science, they divided the subject into four which is: Physics, Chemistry, Earth Science, and Biology. But for this, we have one classification of Science per quarter.

AND BEFORE I FORGET, we have like this whole separation of stuff in our schools. We have this first and second quarter or grading for the first semester, and the third and fourth grading for the second semester. And before the end of every quarter, we have Periodic Exams aka the most stressful exam of all. But in other schools, AKA MY SCHOOL, we have like exams EVERY MONTH. yay for me, right.

And like I said before, we're not allowed to drop any of these subjects unlike some schools in the other countries. We have to study what we're given no matter how hard it is. So really, y'all are lucky you're able to drop Math.

ALSO, MATH in here is not divided. It's pretty much like in the UK where it's all MATHS. They don't divide it here like Pre-calc or Trigonometry or Algebra and Calc. No. Instead, we learn it all. (Cries)

PART THREE: Uni/College, Preschool, and etc.

Well uni here works the same way like every other uni in the world, I think. So yes, choose a course, apply to a school. I'm not really in uni yet, I'm just a fourteen year old ninth grader so I do not know how this works, yet.

But here in the Philippines if you compute it, you start first grade at either 6 or 7 (I started at 6), so when you graduate, you're either going to be 16 or 17 in your first year of college. Young as hell, right?

Also, in here, we're not allowed to work if we're underage. We're going to need some kind of parents' consent in order to work underage.

Now as for pre-school aka pre-elementary days, these are for the kiddies. Usually, parents send their kids to a pre-school and there's like four divisions of it. Nursery (3-4 year olds I think), Kinder Jr. (4-5), Kinder Sr. (5-6), and Preparatory (6-7). Some of them don't even go to nursery and they just skip to Kinder Jr. As for my case, I didn't go to nursery. I'm only in Kinder Sr. at four, and Prep at five. So I was six in first grade.

Not much is going to be discussed in here.

But for the new curriculum, we have this K-12 which adds additional two years (grades 11 and 12). So here is how our country's educational system is going to look a lot like the others. There is no more first year second year third year or anything of the like, we're just grades 1-12. We start from Kindergarten and then end at 12th grade. Hence the term K-12.

Also, for school activities, we have prom usually at February as well as school's foundation week. We also have intramurals which falls on August-September where different sports competitions and brain competitions are held.

We have two sets of uniform, School uniform which is a blouse and a skirt that falls one-three inches below our kneecaps, and PE uniform which is jogging pants and t-shirt.

Some schools are also strict as hell (like mine), we have these rules of no PDA, no dyeing of hair, boys aren't allowed to get piercings, girls aren't allowed to wear huge ass earrings. And all of that.

Also, in schools here we have this whole academics first kind of thing. So we must be at our peak on our academics, which is why a lot of Asians are so smart. In here, if you're a member of the school's varsity team (I'm a part of the football/soccer team), you have to maintain at least a grade of 82 on all of your subjects just to secure your place in the team. If you have like a grade of 81 and below, you're dead meat. Also, if you have a misconduct (e.g. had a fight, cheated the exams, etc.) you're kicked out of the team.

I hope I covered all of the things in here needed for Philippine's Educational system since a lot of people are like confused about this. So yeah, if you have any questions regarding my culture you can PM me!