MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Education (DepEd) has released the guidelines for

the conduct of work immersion activities for senior high school students in the country.

Work immersion is a key feature in the senior high school curriculum. It can be conducted in
different ways depending on the purposes and needs of the learners, Education Secretary
Leonor Briones said.

The guidelines said work immersion which can range from 80 to 320 hours will enable
students to become familiar with the workplace, experience workplace simulation and apply
their competencies in areas of specialization.

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Work immersion will help develop among learners life and career skills, and will prepare them
to make decisions on postsecondary education or employment, the guidelines read.

Through partnership building, DepEd hopes that partner institutions will provide learners with
work immersion opportunities, workplace or hands-on experience, and additional learning
resources, it added.

The agency said schools may partner with recognized institutions or organizations to come up
with agreements on work immersion for students.

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As the students are still minors, DepEd said work immersion requires parental consent.

DepEd, in collaboration with its partners and stakeholders, shall ensure that all schools and
venues for learning are conducive to the education and safety of the learners. The safety of
learners is primary, it added.

Consequently, the maximum number of hours spent in the work immersion venue is 40 hours
per week and no more than eight hours per day as provided by law, the agency said.
DepEd stressed that work immersion should not be reduced as a mere recruitment tool for a
partner institution, saying that the students should also gain skills that will enable them to qualify
for other job options.

Schools and students should not be asked to pay the senior high school partner institution for
any work immersion activity conducted. Fees for work immersion must only be set after
consultation with parents, added the guidelines.

Immersion Program
In SY 2009-2010, the Department of Theology, through the efforts of Roberto Bobby Guevarra and
Michael Lib Liberatore, engaged ACED as a partner in the Seniors Praxis Program. Through the
partnership, seniors of the Loyola Schools are able to join ACED in its efforts to improve the quality of
public school education in the Philippines. Senior students taking Theology 141 are given the opportunity
to join profiling visits to public schools in two of ACEDs major areas of operation Paraaque City and
Quezon City.

Students who choose to join ACED areas undergo a day-long profiling workshop to prepare
them for their area insertion. In the workshop, students are briefed on the methods used in
profiling visits. More specifically, they go through simulations of focus group discussions,
interviews, class observations and facilities checks.

During the actual area insertion, the immersion students visit public schools to sit with the
different members of the school community principal, teachers, parents and students and
discuss issues and challenges that the local community faces. The immersion students are also
given a first-hand view of regular classroom lectures and of the general status of public school
facilities.

Central to the ACED immersion process is the writing of the school profile report. After the are
insertion, immersion students are tasked to accomplish a school profile report relating in detail
information they gathered in the profiling visit. They are also tasked to process and incorporate
quantitative data about the school in the profile report.

At the end of the entire immersion process, students are given an opportunity to contemplate
and understand their experience in the context of a Catholic social vision. Guided by an ACED
Project Staff Profiler, students reflect on the various issues that inhabit the Philippine public
school system and on interventions that may address them.

Overall, the ACED Immersion Program aims to open a window through which senior students of
the Loyola Schools may perceive the world at large. At the end of the process, it is hoped that
those who join the program will have gained an understanding of education as an important
social sector; an understanding enlightened by a Christ-centered faith. Finally, it is the goal of
the program to motivate the immersion students to be more actively involved in efforts to uplift
the quality of public school education in the country.
A Study to Identify Program
Standards, Goals, Objectives
and Projects in Existing High
School Foreign Language
Immersion Programs in the
United States

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Date
1999

Author
Barr-Harrison, Pat

Advisor
De Lorenzo, William E.

DRUM DOI
doi:10.13016/M2DR2P850

Metadata
Show full item record
This study sought to identify Program Standards, Goals, Objectives and
Projects in all high school immersion programs in the United States (U.S.)
and to look for common standards and similar features in identifying
emergent models, guidelines, and objectives. The study focused on 20
High School Immersion Programs identified by the Center for Applied
Linguistics. It was the official list of schools, identified in its most recent
survey of immersion programs in the U.S. (1997). There were only two
studies on high school immersion programs reported in the most
comprehensive description of immersion schools in the U.S. (Fortune and
Jorstad, 1996); however, since that time, many high schools have
established immersion programs. At this time, these programs do not
have the support of national guidelines or standards for secondary
immersion programs. Immersion planners develop their own objectives
and do not have research studies to cite when asked by administrators if
this were an effective immersion program. This research study identified
15 experts in the field of immersion education representing National
Resource Centers, high school immersion programs authors of immersion
articles, and researchers on immersion issues. They were interviewed on
major topics, such as, standards, guidelines, objectives, and special
features that should be present in all models for immersion high schools.
The experts identified characteristics and features that could help create
guidelines for high school immersion programs. Concurrently, as the
experts were interviewed, a questionnaire was sent to the 20 high schools
identified as the population for the study. The first part of the
questionnaire included statements about standards, goals, and
objectives; the second part sought to find commonalities in the high
school program on a variety of topics; the third part identified
instructional practices and asked participants to respond using a Likert
Scale. The findings were reported in a qualitative manner with
quantifiable representations. Descriptive statistics were identified:
frequency counts, percents, means, median, mode, standard deviation,
standard errors, and variances. In many instances, content analyses were
used to interpret the data. Commonalities were discovered among goals,
content, course offerings, and instructional practices. Implications of the
data were presented as well as recommendations for future study.
URI

mmersion in senior high school

MINI CRITIQUE By Isagani Cruz (The Philippine Star) | Updated June 20, 2013 - 12:00am

4 156 googleplus0 12

As an admitted maverick in the field of education, I have been doing things by myself without
benefit of official blessing from the government or any educational institution.

For example, before Noynoy Aquino became president, I convened a series of Curriculum
Summits to talk about how to improve the curriculum. In those Summits, the countrys leading
education officials agreed that adding two more years to basic education would be an ideal way
to solve a number of problems in the system.

President Aquino, the different government institutions involved in education, and Congress
have since made K to 12 a reality rather than a mere ideal.

As I looked over the paradigm created by the steering committee of the K to 12 reform program,
however, I suddenly realized that we had overlooked a major gap in the system.

The curriculum has been reengineered from pre-school to tertiary general education. It is now
seamless, without disruptions caused previously by trifocalization and bureaucratic structures.
We have firmly agreed on what students should know and be able to do after 12 years of basic
education or more (if they go to college).

What is missing is a clear idea of what the term Immersion implies.

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In the approved latest draft of the Senior High School (SHS) curriculum, students that choose to
take the Technical-Vocational-Livelihood and the Arts and Sports tracks are expected to spend
1,404 hours outside campus, doing Immersion.

This total is divided into four. In the first half or semester of Grade 11, the student will spend 270
hours in a company, field, organization, or other workplace. In the second half or semester of
Grade 11, s/he will spend another 270 hours. In the first half or semester of Grade 12, s/he will
do 324 hours.

In the final half or semester of Grade 12, the student will spend practically all the time (or 540
hours) outside campus (except for a few monitoring or processing sessions on campus). In
effect, for much of three-fourths of his or her time and for a whole fourth of his or her time in
SHS, the student becomes a de facto full-time employee or worker in a workplace.
Our country has had a lot of experience with on-the-job training (OJT) programs on the
collegiate level. Unfortunately, many (if not most) college OJT students are assigned only to
insignificant jobs in a company (answering the phone, making photocopies, making coffee that
sort of thing). Rarely are OJT students expected to produce the same products that regular
employees produce.

There are sterling exceptions, of course, one of which is the journalism college that I head,
where OJT students, like our own students, write news items in a newspaper just like regular
reporters. (Excuse me for mentioning that, but then, why not?)

Immersion in SHS will be useless if it is patterned after most of the OJT experiences currently
being undertaken by college students.

In order to make Immersion meaningful and useful, we need to get the companies and not just
the schools aware of the educational objectives and processes of K to 12.

The human resources departments of companies have to know what it means to handle
inexperienced adolescents (still with no work ethic but with raging hormones), how to make
them do without pay what adult employees are doing for pay, what the design of the curriculum
is (Understanding By Design, remember?), what the role of Immersion is in the whole process of
lifelong learning, and so on. That means training for staff in companies. That means expertise
and funds.

I could not expect the Department of Education (DepEd) to do this training, because the
students and their company mentors will not be in school campuses but in workplaces. Neither
could the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), because the students will not yet have
been admitted to tertiary studies. Despite its being in close touch with various industries, the
Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) does not have the expertise to
do it, because TESDA students are trained in TESDA centers, not in actual workplaces.

Therefore, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I knew about the German dual education system, where students work while they study.
Because the Philippines already has a few German-style dual-education programs (and even a
law!), I thought of asking the German government to help us out with this missing link in the K to
12 reform.

Since I had no government personality, I sought the help of one of the most effective and
efficient government officials we now have in our foreign service, the Philippine ambassador to
Germany, Maria Cleofe Natividad. She is an excellent example of the way our foreign service is
quietly working to make other countries aware of the positive change in our political and
economic climate.

Under Ambassador Natividads extraordinary leadership and fully supported by Foreign Affairs
Secretary Albert Del Rosario, I talked to German agencies and companies. We found an ally in
a German foundation already working in Cebu and Mindanao, the non-profit AFOS Foundation
for Entrepreneurial Development Cooperation, which had successfully put up networks with the
Cebu and Mandaue Chambers of Commerce, Don Bosco, and the University of San
Carlos. (To be continued)
 Homepage ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch: 1

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