THE UST Education High School (EHS) launched its own senior high school (SHS) program on Friday, Aug. 1, during its 75th founding anniversary.
Vice Rector for Academic Affairs Cheryl Peralta presented the 36 pilot Grade 11 students, who were also junior high school (JHS) completers of EHS, during the 29th Doña Caridad Sevilla Memorial Lecture.
“Through the generous support of our beloved alumni and the trust of our parents and students in the brand of Thomasian education that we can provide, we now witness the birth of the EHS Senior High School,” Peralta said in her remarks.
Peralta stressed the “two-fold purpose” of the new program: to allow Grade 10 students to continue their education at the University, and to provide training for pre-service teachers at the SHS level.
“No need to transfer to another senior high school before they come back here for college. And hopefully, to motivate them to pursue teacher education programs and further contribute to improving learning in the country,” she said.
In an interview with the Varsitarian, EHS Principal Marielyn Quintana said three factors led to the creation of the SHS program: the students, the pre-service teachers, and the alumni.
“Some of them (students), after moving up, they cannot afford to pay [for] our own senior high school, so they transferred to public schools. So to keep them here, we decided to offer the senior high school,” Quintana said.
She was referring to the UST Senior High School (UST SHS), established in 2016 with the country’s switch to the K to 12 basic education system that added two years of schooling, Grades 11 and 12. UST SHS had more than 5,000 students last year at its own building, the Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati Building on España Street.
Alumni pledged to help EHS students continue their studies at the University until they finish SHS.
“We would also like to provide training for our College of Education students…experience on how to teach, skills in teaching SHS,” Quintana said.
The newly opened program will implement the new SHS curriculum of the Department of Education. UST is one of the pilot schools for the revised curriculum.
“Thus, our EHS will join our SHS in designing senior high school programs that are appropriate to the needs of their learners and contextualized to the purpose and available resources,” Peralta said.
Quintana said the SHS program will offer the “academic educational pathway,” focusing on preparing for the college-level education program cluster.
“They’re aware that we no longer have tracks, but we have clusters. And what we’re offering is the education cluster. In other words, the subjects that we’re offering are a hybrid of [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics], as well as [Humanities and Social Sciences], Arts, Music,” she said.
Quintana said the SHS program would be exclusive to EHS completers. The pilot batch of Grade 11 students of EHS took the UST Entrance Test.
Present at the launching were the administrators of EHS and the College of Education, sponsors of the EHS students, parents of the scholars, and the pioneer Grade 11 students for Academic Year 2025-2026. Louisse Raye Shara C. Santos
