Basic education grads have employable skills -TESDA

By Lito Dar

BAGUIO CITY - - Through the national government’s K + 12 basic education reform program, high school graduates will soon have the necessary technical-vocational education and skills development that would give them a very good opportunity to be employed or to be entrepreneurs at young age.

Undersecretary Milagros Dawa-Hernandez, Technical Education and Skills Development Authority Deputy Director General bared this in an interview here.

According to Hernandez, part of the priority agenda of President Benigno Aquino III is to reform the country’s basic education as the Philippines is one of only two remaining countries that still have a 10 year basic education. “Our high school graduates today even if they graduate as valedictorian lack the tech-voc skills education and training that could immediately provide them a better opportunity for employment or to start a livelihood.”

The K+12 requires all incoming students to enroll two more years of basic education.

The K+12 system will include Universal kindergarten, six years of elementary, four years of junior high school with an additional two years for senior high school. The 6-year-high school is set to be implemented next school year .

“Through the K +12 basic education program, tech-voc education and skills development will be embedded in the curriculum of basic education, particularly on the higher years or from grade nine to 12 and through TESDA regular high school graduates could also get a National Certification (NC I or II) if they pass the required assessment”, she said.

According to Hernandez, the objective is to provide pre-employment education and skills to young people since not all high school graduates are capable or fortunate enough to pursue higher education and that not all needs to take one just to get a good employment or entrepreneurship opportunity.

“It is also a fact that not all Filipinos need to be a graduate of higher education, since there is a very high demand among different industries for nationally certified highly skilled Filipino workers. Skilled Filipino workers are among the best workers all over the world that we can proud off,” Hernandez said.

Through the K + 12 basic education program, we are looking at a yearly average of about 1.2 million high school students that already have tech-voc education and skills training wherein upon graduation can even be nationally certified by TESDA (up to NC II level), upon passing the needed certification assessment requirements, according to Hernandez.

She added it is a priority of the Aquino administration to intensify the country’s tech-voc education and skills development training, so that we can respond to the manpower need of the leading industries in the country such as the Business Process Outsourcing (BPOs) and electronics/semi-conductor industries.

Hernandez was in the city to represent TESDA in first K to 12 pre-summit and conference at the Teachers Camp here.