K to 12 Act or Republic Act 10533 aims to reconstruct and improve the quality of basic education in the Philippines to provide learning from Kinder to Senior High School (SHS) to ensure mastery of knowledge and skills after every level.

The Senior High School Curriculum ensures learners a better opportunity to learn skills that will qualify them for employment after finishing the Senior High School or prepare them for business or proceed to take a baccalaureate degree.

Of the 394 public Junior High School (JHS) and 177 non-DepEd schools in Region IX, 168 or 43 percent public and 137 or 77 percent were approved by DepEd Central Office to operate Senior High School starting SY 2016-2017.

Of the eight divisions, three Schools Division Offices (SDOs) namely, Dapitan, Isabela and Zambo Sibugay are noted for all its SHS offering Academic Track while there is one or two of the other SDOs that do not offer the track.

Of the four Academic strands, GAS is the highest preference which is 91 percent or 143 out of the 168 SHS, while the least chosen is STEM which is only 23 percent or 36 out of the 168 SHSs that offer the track.

Of the 168 DepEd SHSs, 157 or 93 percent offer TVL Track while in non-DepEd school is 133 or 97percent out of its 137 SHSs offers TVL Track.

All the sites of the four SDOs (Dapitan, Isabela, Pagadian and Zamboanga del Norte) are offering TVL Track.

Of the four TVL strands, Home Economics at 62 percent is the most preferred TVL strand for DepEd schools while in ICT at 65 percent for non-DepEd schools.

Agri-Fishery Arts (AFA) is the least chosen TVL strand for both DepEd at 27.4 percent and non-DepEd at 12 percent schools.

On the other hand, seven DepEd SHS and eight non-DepEd schools offer Sports Track that is located in Region IX except Isabela City.

Moreover, nine DepEd schools and 10 non-DepEd schools offer Arts and Design Track which are also distributed in the divisions except Isabela City.

Region IX has a total of 47,917 SHS students   enrolled in the 1st semester.  Of this number, 56.5 percent or 27,076 are enrolled in the 168 DepEd Schools which is 57 percent of the total number schools that offer SHS program while 18,304 or 38.2 percent are enrolled in the 121 private providers and 2,537 or 5.3 percent have chosen to enrol in the 13 LUC/SUC that were granted permit to offer SHS program.

Of the 8 Divisions, Zamboanga del Sur has the highest enrolment in public schools while Zamboanga City for private schools as well as in number of non-DepEd SHS sites.