President Marcos Jr. has ordered the integration of the technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in the curriculum of senior high school (SHS), Malacañang said Tuesday.
Mr. Marcos gave the directive in a sectoral meeting on Tuesday morning to make sure SHS graduates are “ready and employable for the workforce,” Malacañang Press Briefer Daphne Oseña-Paez said in a press briefing.
“President Marcos stresses the need to reskill and upskill our workers, in order to meet the demands of the current and future labor market here in the Philippines and of course globally,” Oseña-Paez said.
“The President expressed the importance of consulting industries and government agencies, so that skills training and education are aligned with the goal of future employability. This is of course in keeping with achieving the goals of Ang Bagong Pilipinas (the New Philippines),” she added.
Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) director general Suharto Mangudadatu said the SHS graduates would be given the “National Competency Skills” certification, on top of their diploma, to give them a higher chance to get employed.
Rosanna Urdaneta, TESDA deputy director general for Policies and Planning, said Marcos’ directive would be “more advantageous” for SHS students because it will improve their employability.
“For the students, they already have a diploma, they have a national certificate if they need it because there is a problem and they need to work, they can’t go to college right away, they have a national certificate. They can go to a company or an industry, and they will be able to tell that they have competencies in this area,” she said.
Urdaneta said a technical working group (TWG) will be created to discuss the “nitty gritty” of the SHS’ curriculum development.
Urdaneta said the TWG will be composed of the TESDA, the Department of Education, the Commission on Higher Education, and the Department of Labor and Employment.
She said there will be a pilot testing of the planned integration of the TVET in the SHS curriculum.
The TWG will then select the regions where the pilot testing will be done, adding some of the factors considered include “poverty incidence and the largeness, mediumness, and smallness of a region.”
“We have initially selected some regions pero we want to vet it with our counterparts,” Urdaneta said. “It’s not that easy. Even those of us who have been in the education service for a long time, say it’s not easy, but it’s possible. So, we really need to start now.”
Urdaneta said there is also a plan to retrain the teachers to enable them to contextualize the TVET programs, adding that the training will be conducted first in public schools.