Level of preparedness of STEM senior high school graduates in taking up engineering program: a Philippine setting

摘要

The Philippines implemented the new K to 12 education system starting academic year 2016 to 2017 adding two more years in the basic education called senior high school. The addition of senior high school resulted to major changes in the curriculum of both high school and college levels. One of the many changes is removing some engineering mathematics and science courses from college level and bringing it down to the high school level. Although the government was believed to have supported the rigorous design and smooth implementation of the new system, many stakeholders, especially the higher education institutions, are concerned about the preparedness of their future engineering students. This study aimed at assessing the level of preparedness of STEM senior high school graduates in taking engineering baccalaureate programs by using a multiple-choice-question instrument composed topics that are required to be learned by STEM senior high school graduates to match the entry requirement of an engineering freshman student. The instrument was deployed to 363 STEM graduates who were enrolled in the engineering programs of National University Philippines without any prior intervention. Using one-sample t test, the combined test scores resulted into a mean of 54.17 percent which is significantly lower than the test value of 75 percent. Analyzing the kurtosis of the data distribution and Tukey box plots, the data is found to be significantly relevant to arrive at a certain conclusion. The level of preparedness was presented in a Likert scale showing that 88.98 percent of the STEM senior high school graduates who took the test are only somewhat prepared to take baccalaureate engineering program.