Split Shift High School In The Philippines: How It Affects 9th Graders And What Helps
The rain started spitting just as I pulled out my phone to check Lila’s last text: 6:27pm, Running late, hope the bus isn’t full already. It’s the same line I get three out of five school days, now that my 14-year-old is in 9th grade at our local public high school in Cavite. Overcrowding means the school splits sections into morning and late shifts, and Lila’s section got slotted for the late rotation: classes start at 10am, wrap at 6:30pm, and the 20-minute ride home from school means fighting for a spot on the public bus every single night.
Most people I talk to outside our situation hear 10am start and assume it’s a nice perk—extra sleep, a slow morning, what’s the problem? But that’s not how it works in our small household. My husband leaves for his construction job at 6am, my 10-year-old son leaves for elementary school at 7am, and the house is never quiet enough for Lila to sleep in even if she wanted to. She’s up by 7:30 most days, helps pack my son’s lunch, preps her own school bag, and has to be out the door by 9am to catch a bus that gets her to school on time. If that morning bus is full, she waits 20 minutes for the next one, is marked late, and too many lates add up to a lowered mark in citizenship. It’s just as stressful at the start of the day as it is at the end.
Last month, she came home soaking through to her socks. Two buses were already full when she got to the stop after class, and she had to squeeze onto a third that was so overcrowded she had to stand half hanging out the door, holding her backpack above her head to keep it from getting hit by rain. Her math notebooks were still ruined, the ink bleeding across the page of her homework, and she just sat at our dining table, staring at the wet paper, too tired to even cry hard. That’s when I realized how much this constant low-level uncertainty wears on them. It’s not just an inconvenience of commuting. It changes how they show up to class and how they feel when they get home.
Lila told me a few weeks back that by 5pm, most of her class is already distracted. Everyone’s checking the time, counting down the minutes to the bell, because they know the first buses out fill up fast. If you don’t run as soon as the bell rings, you’re stuck waiting 20, 30 minutes, and you get home that much later. That means the last two hours of lessons, when kids are already tired from a full day of class, don’t stick the way they should. That’s the part most policy makers and even teachers don’t talk about enough: the commute stress doesn’t stay on the bus. It follows them into the classroom.
We can’t afford a private school with single shifts, and my husband needs our car for work, so I can’t drive her every day. But over the past few months, we’ve tried small changes that have taken a lot of the edge off, and most of them don’t cost any extra money.
The first adjustment I made was shifting our whole family’s dinner from 6pm to 8pm. Before, we’d wait for her, everyone would be hungry and grumpy, and she’d walk in the door already feeling rushed to eat, get started on homework, and wrap up for the night. Now, my husband and son eat a small snack if they’re hungry before she gets home, and we all sit down together when she’s here. I also started keeping a cold bottle of her favorite lemonade in the fridge ready for her, and I don’t ask about homework or grades the second she walks in. I just hand her the drink, give her 15 minutes to sit on the porch and scroll through her phone or vent about the bus, and we talk about school after that. It sounds small, but it used to be that she’d shut down the second I asked about assignments, because she was still carrying the stress of the commute. Now she has time to decompress first.
I also put together a small, waterproof crossbody bag she keeps with her at all times. It holds her phone, her wallet, and her daily homework notebooks, so even if her big backpack gets soaked or crammed between people on the bus, her most important things stay dry and unwrinkled. I added a thin foldable foam cushion that fits in the side pocket, too—for when she can’t get a seat and has to sit on the hard plastic step at the front of the bus. That’s one change she says makes the longest rides way more bearable.
When I met with Lila’s adviser a couple months back, we talked about small changes teachers can make too, and she’s already implemented them with the other late shift teachers. No pop quizzes during the first hour of class, when most kids are still shaken from a crowded commute and rushing to find their seats. Big projects and essays get at least one week of advance notice, instead of being assigned at 6pm and due the next morning. These changes don’t require extra budget or extra time from teachers, they just require recognizing that late shift kids have different stressors than morning shift kids.
Yesterday, Lila got the last seat on the bus right after the bell rang. She texted me 10 minutes after dismissal saying she was already on her way, and she got home 20 minutes earlier than usual. We ate dinner half an hour early, she had time to watch a 20-minute episode of her favorite show before starting homework, and she went to bed 45 minutes earlier than usual. It was such a small win, but it made the whole week feel lighter.
We don’t know if Lila’s section will get moved to the morning shift next semester, and we can’t change how overcrowded our public schools are right now. Some days are still hard: last week she missed two buses in a row, got home after 8, homework ran until 11:30, and she was too tired to eat more than a few bites. But these small adjustments have made the hard days more manageable. It’s not a fair system, and it’s not what any kid would choose for their high school experience. But for now, showing up with a cold drink, a dry change of clothes, and a little extra time to breathe is enough to get through another week.
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