ZAMBOANGA CITY -- Education Sec. Leonor Briones on Tuesday urged parents to encourage their children to enroll in Arts and Design as well as Sports Tracks in Senior High School.
Briones made the call as she noticed that the two strands have few takers among Senior High School students in the country.
Briones said there were only 4,758 enrollees in Arts and Design Track representing 0.38 percent of the country’s Senior High School population for school year 2017-2018.
Briones said the Sports Track has registered 2,145 enrollees or 0.17 percent of the Senior High School students population in the same school year.
“We don’t look at sports as a profession. Sometimes you look at it as entertainment,” she said the reason why very few enrolled in Sports Track.
“The same manner also in Arts and Design,” she added.
But she said designers didn’t even need to proceed to college for them to excel in their chosen career.
“They just go (on) to (study), specialize courses,” she added.
The Academic Track has the highest number of Senior High School stdudents in the country with 765,588 enrollees or 61.13 percent.
It is followed by the Technical-Vocational-Livelihood Track with 479,866 enrollees or 38.32 percent of the Senior High School students population.
Briones said there are 1.2 million anticipated first batch completers for Senior High School for school year 2017-2018 in the country.
Briones was here on Tuesday as the keynote speaker in the graduation of the first batch of Senior High School completers from the Don Pablo Lorenzo Memorial High School and Maria Clara Lorenzo Lobregat National High School as well as of the Alternative Learning System (ALS) of the City Division of Schools.
The ALS is a parallel learning system in the Philippines that provides a practical option to the existing formal instruction.
When one does not have or cannot access formal education in schools, ALS is an alternate or substitute.
ALS includes both the non-formal and informal sources of knowledge and skills. (PNA)
