Expansion of Mandarin training program for teachers eyed

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines and China are looking at expanding an existing Mandarin training program for Filipino teachers, the Department of Education (DepEd) said yesterday.

Education Secretary Leonor Briones said the expansion of the program was among the topics discussed during the recent trip of President Duterte to China. 

“This has been going on in the past three years on a limited scale. What both countries want is an acceleration of this exchange because so far, nearly 300 teachers have already been trained in the Mandarin language at the Confucius Institute here in the Philippines,” she said in a statement. 

“They have formal lessons here and then they go to China for exposure visits,” Briones added. 

The DepEd chief, who joined Duterte in China, said the trip involved discussions on the enhancement of cultural and learning exchange between the two countries. 

She said the action plans and agreements following the meetings are projected to benefit the education sector.

Briones said the expansion of Mandarin training is expected to improve the teaching-learning process for Filipino students, specifically those in junior high school who are taking Mandarin as an elective subject under DepEd’s decade-old Special Program in Foreign Language (SPFL) in public schools. 

SPFL also offers Spanish, French, German, Korean and Japanese languages as elective subjects in selected public schools. 

Briones said China is also interested in hiring around 2,000 Filipino teachers to teach English to Chinese learners. 

She said the recruitment – which may happen within the year – will still have to undergo several stages to ensure the quality, compensation, benefits and welfare of Filipino teachers who will be employed.

“My answer to this is it’s not only China that is looking for teachers to teach English abroad. Thailand is very much interested in our English teachers,” Briones said. 

“Also, we prefer that this will be on a government-to-government basis, along with the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, because usually if you go through agents on either side, it will be a primary burden to the teachers. We need to work on the details, how teachers will be chosen, qualifications and how this will be implemented,” she added. 

In March, the DepEd and the Ministry of Education of Thailand also convened to discuss the employment of Filipino teachers for the “English for All” project of the Kingdom of Thailand. 

But Briones cautioned that such programs have to be discussed carefully as the country also needs English teachers.

“The matter of where you want to work, where you want to reside, where you want to pursue a profession, is a free choice. It is a choice that has to be made by the teacher,” she said. 

“What we want to assure is that the teacher is well-protected. Even as we protect the teachers, we also protect our country and its needs. In terms of public school teachers, we have to look at our own supply of teachers. We are not urging them, they make a choice; it’s a universal human right,” she added. 

Briones said discussions during the China trip also resulted in Beijing’s proposed assistance to the education sector’s infrastructure requirements, particularly for technical and information and communications technology (ICT) equipment.

“It will be more on scientific and ICT instruments because this is where we need assistance, but I was very specific when we had our talks with (the Department of Foreign Affairs) that it will not come automatically because these will have to be done within the ambit of our own procurement laws, which have to be complied with,” she added.