College entrance exam to be revived — DepEd chief

CLARK FIELD, Pampanga — Education Secretary Jesli Lapus said here yesterday the Cabinet has reached a consensus to restore tests similar to the National College Entrance Examinations for the entry of high school students into college, 12 years after the NCEE was abolished.

Lapus also bared government plans to launch a massive adopt-a-school program "to encourage the private sector to become partners of the Department of Education (DepEd) in addressing the perennial problems of the education system such as classrooms, desks and the textbook backlog."

In an interview after appealing to members of the Clark Investors and Locators Association (CILA) to support the program, Lapus cited the need to restore a qualifying exam for entry into college amid shortage of "technical people" to fill in the employment demands of a growing number of local and foreign investors in the country.

He said that the exams could be implemented this December "but we have to look at the law to put this into effect but I am sure we can get the President to certify this."

"We really have to look at the timing, but I am not sure we can do it for the next enrollment," he said, noting that while tertiary education is under the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), "the national testing center is under DepEd."

He also noted that "there is also a law that says that DepEd has an oversight (function over CHED). We will review that because it doesn’t seem to have been implemented and we will see. So far, we are seeing eye to eye with the CHED and there is no disagreement."

"This is similar to our national achievement test in terms of mastery of subjects needed to get out of high school," he said.

Lapus said that "as a national policy, we should know what is demanded in the market that should be encouraged in college so we are thinking of, for example, reducing tuition for math, science and English subjects and probably giving scholarships."

Before the NCEE was abolished in 1994, high school graduates who did not pass the examinations were allowed to enroll only in technical and vocational courses.

But Lapus stressed that failure to pass such examinations should not stop the student from enrolling in technical courses, as he noted that when he used to work with a company in Germany, technical workers were even better paid than their white-collar counterparts.

He also noted that in the country these days, most of those who readily find jobs are those who took up technical courses.

Lapus noted an "overflow" of students graduating from courses that are not readily employable. This, he said, could be discouraged "by increasing tuition fees" and even "closing a lot of colleges and universities, especially state colleges and universities."

"Why are state colleges and universities subsidizing students that we know will not have any market demand?" he asked.

At the same time, Lapus also said that the adopt-a-school program is also designed "to provide mechanisms which will allow the private sector to render assistance in the upgrading and modernization of the Philippine public school system."

He said the program is in accordance with Republic Act No. 8525.

Lapus said the program is the DepEd’s response "to the challenges being faced by the education system today" as he noted that "the delivery of quality education is hampered because the funding allocated for it has not been able to match the annual growth in student population."