By Perla Lena/PNA

ILOILO CITY — Twenty-four implementers of the Senior High School (SHS) program received a gold award during the 2018 Harvest of Excellence of the Division of Iloilo of the Department of Education (DepEd) held in this city Tuesday night.
“It is our initiative at the Schools Division of Iloilo to have a policy and then determine the monitoring so that we have quality offering in senior high school and everybody after Grade 10 must be enrolled in Grade 11,” Assistant Schools Division Superintendent Dr. Nordy Siason said in an interview Wednesday.
He added that almost three-fourths of the pioneer implementers, mostly offering the technical-vocational track, were given awards.
“We have some indicators in order to be judged as best implementers,” he said.
The schools were evaluated based on their planning to ensuring access, learning environment to governance, partnerships and linkages and plus factors to include the copy of SHS handbook, worthwhile innovation, promotional videos and tech-voc national competency passers.
He added that almost 100 awardees have met the SHS implementation standard. For those that failed to meet the standard, DepEd is ready to provide technical assistance.
“But to be fair, almost all of them meet the minimum. The awardees though extremely perform in all areas of our SHS implementation program,” he added.
The challenge now, he said, rests on secondary school heads who have been empowered by Republic Act 9155 or the Governance of Basic Education Act of 2001 to innovate, improve and sustain the program.
“It is more on management, instructional and administrative leadership of our school heads,” he said.
The division also conferred a silver award to 20 SHS implementers and bronze award to 14 others, all belonging to the first batch of implementers.
Based on the evaluation criteria for first batch of implementers, schools that garner 133 to 137 points will receive the bronze award; 138 to142 points, silver; and 143 and above, gold.
For the second batch, schools with 118 to 121 points will earn the bronze award; 122 to 125, silver; and 126 and up, gold. Under the said criteria, three schools received the silver award and two for bronze.