Integrating tech-voc programs

A former secretary, a college graduate of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, took a technical course on slaughtering after hearing from a relative of job openings abroad. For a diminutive girl, it was difficult to imagine her on the shop floor of a slaughterhouse wielding cutting knives on carcasses larger than her.

But she has survived, and is on course to bring the rest of her immediate family to live with her. She has also managed to find a better-paying and less physically strenuous job in the slaughterhouse that employs her, and while the work is still mostly clerical, this is enough to pay for the food and home of her migrant family.

Such is the route that some Filipinos who seek better lives in overseas jobs take. They rely on information passed on by relatives living and working abroad, make a plan, and go through the years-long process of realizing their dream.

Most Filipinos, though, rely on manpower recruitment agencies that post of work opportunities from other countries. You can see job seekers poring over bulletin board announcements in hopes of finding an offer that matches or approximates their current skills.

It’s a very laid back approach, hoping for luck and the chance to be selected among a mountain of other application forms. Many job openings require rudimentary skills, thus the job processing fees take a huge chunk of their aggregated salaries.

Still, these are longer-term jobs compared to the daily or weekly gig work opportunities available locally. The take-home pay may still be low, but it provides a steady and reliable income stream, and a chance for another longer-term job when the contract expires.

Life counseling

Job placement has always been a challenge for our educational system, be it for technical and vocational schools or at the higher tertiary levels, or for local work or overseas jobs.

The process of aligning the last two years of secondary level education, known as senior high school (SHS), with the job market has not been going well given the still low numbers of students that decide to take the technical-vocational-livelihood (TVL) track.

Indeed, it seems foolish for a graduating junior high school (JHS) student to choose the TVL track if there is no clear promise of a job after two years of SHS learning.

The absence of competent career counseling during the last JHS year, and even the first SHS year, adds to the malady.

Just how many career counselors in schools do we have who are knowledgeable of the job market in their locality, perhaps even of overseas work, to confidently advise their JHS graduating students of the many opportunities they can build upon in the next two years of SHS? Are they really able to provide ample life counseling for their wards to become productive citizens?

Choosing a career starts during the last years of JHS, and working on building up the necessary skills starts on the first day of SHS. If a student starts Day 1 of SHS without a clear mindset of where he or she is going, then chances are, the next two years will just go to waste.

Realigning SHS

It’s not too late to introduce the right changes to SHS, even as radical as eliminating the academic track that somehow just wasted two years of academic life for students who choose to pursue tertiary education in colleges or universities.

Focusing on improving the TVL track should lead to a 100 percent job acceptance rate for corresponding SHS graduates, making it more attractive to incoming Grade 11 students who have little chances of slugging out a full four-year college course.

Then, there is always that reality that even if a student is able to complete the academic requirements for a full degree, the job opportunities are often limited for many, so much so that college or university graduates, even from prestigious state-funded academic institutions, are forced to accept work that often is unrelated to their specializations.

The TVL curriculum must be strengthened and commitments in place so that employers are ready to accept SHS graduates. The six-month immersion that SHS students have to undergo in the current curriculum does not really build up to employable skills, which had been an oft repeated complaint of companies.

Better linkages

To come up with a two-year TVL track that assures real jobs, not gig work, after SHS graduation, better linkages with potential employers, the local and overseas job markets, and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) are critical.

The beauty of the mandatory two-year SHS is its suitability to human resources planning of many companies, allowing them to broaden their manpower search to students who can master needed skills in a shorter period.

Examples of these would be bookkeeping, encoding, data analytics, and even shop floor skills like machine repairs, electrical works, and many others that don’t require an academic degree, but would be sufficient if competently trained from two years of SHS work to build an acceptable skills level for employers.

In this regard, stronger linkages between the TESDA and DepEd officials in charge of SHS should be forged that will allow JHS graduates to choose a full two-year course in a technical and vocational education and training (TVET).

Many JHS graduates still struggle with finding an SHS school that can accept them without paying for tuition and miscellaneous fees. Shouldn’t DepEd’s TVL track be strongly integrated with TESDA’s programs?

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