TL;DR: AR Pacheco College runs the full ladder from Kinder 1 to a college degree on one Cotabato City campus. College is nine programmes: BEEd, BSEd (English, Math, Filipino, History), BS Criminology, BSBA, BS Social Work, BS Information Systems, BS Tourism Management, BS Early Childhood Education, and a two-year Associate in Computer Technology. Six of those lead to a PRC licence. Senior high runs HUMSS only. No tuition figure is published anywhere on the site.
Antonio R. Pacheco College, Inc. is a private school in Cotabato City, in the Bangsamoro region. Contacts and location sit on the AR Pacheco College profile. One note before anything else: our directory record does not carry a website for this school, but its own Facebook page lists one, arpachecocollege.com, and that site is live. Everything below is from the school's own site unless flagged otherwise.
The full ladder, level by level
The school's academic programmes page presents five departments:
| Department | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Pre School | Kinder 1, Kinder 2 |
| Elementary School | Grades 1 to 6 |
| Junior High School | Grades 7 to 10 |
| Senior High School | HUMSS |
| College | Nine programmes, listed below |
That continuity is the school's own selling point. Its campus page describes "a seamless transition from preschool to college" as a deliberate design rather than an accident of scale. For a family in Cotabato City, the practical version of that is one campus, one registrar, one set of records, and no transfer paperwork at Grade 7 or Grade 11.
Senior high: one strand, and what that costs you
Senior high is HUMSS and nothing else. There is no ABM, no STEM, no GAS, no TVL.
This is the most consequential fact in the whole offering, and it is easy to skim past. HUMSS feeds naturally into education, social work, communication, political science, law and psychology. It does not feed naturally into engineering, accountancy, nursing, medical technology or architecture, all of which assume the mathematics and science load that STEM or ABM carries.
Look at the college list below and the logic becomes clear: the school's own degrees are mostly HUMSS-compatible. BEEd, BSEd, BS Social Work and BSBA all take HUMSS graduates without friction. If your child is aiming at an engineering or health-science degree elsewhere, a HUMSS-only senior high is a handicap you would be choosing on purpose. Our HUMSS strand guide covers what the strand actually prepares you for.
The nine college programmes
The college modal on the school's site lists:
Teacher education
- BEEd, Bachelor of Elementary Education
- BSEd, Bachelor of Secondary Education, with majors in English, Math, Filipino and History
- BECEd, Early Childhood Education
Public safety and social services
- BSCRIM, BS Criminology
- BSSW, BS Social Work
Business, computing and tourism
- BSBA, BS Business Administration
- BSIS, BS Information Systems
- BSTM, BS Tourism Management
- ACT, a two-year Associate in Computer Technology
Three things stand out. The teacher education cluster is the heart of the school, with three separate programmes and four secondary majors. The BSEd major set stops at English, Math, Filipino and History, so Science and Values Education are not options here. And the ACT is the only non-degree programme in the list.
Which ones end in a licensure exam
This matters more than programme names, because a licensed profession has a gate at the end that an unlicensed one does not.
| Programme | Licensure exam | Regulator |
|---|---|---|
| BEEd | Licensure Examination for Teachers (Elementary) | PRC |
| BSEd (all majors) | Licensure Examination for Teachers (Secondary) | PRC |
| BECEd | Licensure Examination for Teachers | PRC |
| BS Criminology | Criminologist Licensure Examination | PRC |
| BS Social Work | Social Worker Licensure Examination | PRC |
| BSBA | None | — |
| BS Information Systems | None | — |
| BS Tourism Management | None | — |
| Associate in Computer Technology | None | — |
Six of the nine programmes are licensure-gated. That is a high proportion, and it changes what you should be asking about. For a licensed programme, the question is not "does the school offer it" but "what percentage of its graduates pass". Ask the registrar for the school's own passing rate in the most recent sitting, by programme. Our guide to board exam passing rates by course explains how to read the numbers you are given, and the teacher education courses guide covers what BEEd, BSEd and Early Childhood Education actually differ on.
For the four unlicensed programmes, the gate is employment rather than an exam, so the equivalent question is where graduates are placed and whether the school runs internships with named employers.
If criminology is the plan, our BS Criminology guide covers what the degree involves and what the licensure exam demands.
The two-year Associate in Computer Technology
The ACT is the odd one out and worth being clear about. A two-year associate programme is not a bachelor's degree, it does not carry a licence, and it is not automatically ladderised into a four-year IT degree.
Some students take it because two years to employment beats four, particularly if money is the constraint. That can be a sound decision. What you should not assume is that the two years will transfer cleanly if you later want a BS Information Systems or BS Information Technology. Credit transfer is decided by the receiving school, not by the sending one. If laddering is the plan, ask AR Pacheco whether its ACT is formally laddered into its own BSIS, and get the answer before you enrol, not in year three.
Fees and scholarships: what is published
Nothing numeric. The website has an admissions block inviting you to "know more about our admission process and requirements" and a scholarships block stating that the college "offers different scholarship grants or financial assistance to qualified and deserving students." Neither carries a peso figure, an eligibility rule, a deadline, or a requirement list.
So tuition at AR Pacheco College is not published, and we will not estimate it. Contact the school at 0997 769 1188 or [email protected] and ask for the full assessment for the level and programme you want, including miscellaneous, laboratory and uniform costs, plus the payment terms.
If you are a college applicant, also ask whether the school is covered by the government's tertiary education subsidy schemes for private institutions, since that is decided per institution and per year and can change the bill substantially.
Who the offering is built for
Read the list as a whole and a shape appears. Teacher education with three programmes and four majors, criminology, social work, public-service-adjacent business and tourism, and a short computing route. These are the professions that hire locally and steadily in a provincial capital: schools, the police service, local government social services, and the hospitality and retail economy around them.
That is a deliberate offering, not a thin one. It suits a student who intends to build a career in and around Cotabato City and who values a single-campus route from preschool to a degree. It suits less well a student aiming at engineering, medicine, architecture, accountancy leading to the CPA exam, or a research science career, because none of those exist here, and the HUMSS-only senior high does not prepare for them either.
If you are in that second group, the honest advice is to choose senior high somewhere with a STEM or ABM strand first, then choose a college. Getting the strand wrong at Grade 11 is harder to undo than getting the college wrong at 18.
What to check on a campus visit
- Passing rates for the LET, the criminology board and the social work board, by programme, most recent sitting
- Whether each college programme holds a current CHED Certificate of Programme Compliance
- Class size in the college programmes, particularly criminology, which tends to be large
- For BSIS and ACT: how many working machines, and how many students share one
- Whether the ACT is formally laddered into the BSIS
- Total first-year cash outlay, not just tuition
Other options in the area are on the schools in Cotabato City page.
Sources
- Antonio R. Pacheco College official website, arpachecocollege.com, Academic Programs section (Pre School, Elementary, Junior High, Senior High and College programme modals), Our Campus, Admission and Scholarship sections
- Antonio R. Pacheco College official Facebook page, About tab (address, mobile number, email, website link)
- SchoolFinderPH directory record for AR Pacheco College
