CHED to review moratorium on new teacher education programs

MANILA, Philippines — Following its decision to lift the moratorium on new nursing programs, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) said it will also review the existing rule prohibiting higher education institutions from opening new degree program on teacher education.

“That is the next one that we will study, especially since it is currently being discussed in the House and Senate… There are proposed legislations such as the bill strengthening the Teachers’ Education Council,” CHED Chairman J. Prospero De Vera III said yesterday in Filipino.

“I also think that it will be part of the review of the K-12 program because teacher education is one of the highly desired degree programs. We will study that next, the teacher ed, because that is also one with a low passing rate in licensure examinations,” he added.

In 2010, CHED imposed a moratorium on undergraduate and graduate degree programs in five areas: nursing, teacher education, business administration, hotel and restaurant management and information technology.

The moratorium on these courses was lifted effective academic year 2015 to 2016, except for the teacher education program.

In the original order, the CHED noted the decline in the performance of teacher education graduates in the licensure examinations, as well as the outcome of the Evaluation of Graduate Program in the Philippines that confirmed the “weakening state of the quality of graduates” from the teacher education programs all over the country.

Based on latest available results, less than half of the examinees who took the March 2022 Licensure Exam for Professional Teachers (LEPT) passed: 10,039 elementary teachers out of 20,567 examinees (48.81 percent) and 7,809 secondary teachers out of 18,717 examinees (41.72 percent).

The Professional Regulation Commission also noted that out of the elementary teacher passers, only 246 were first timers while 9,793 are repeaters. For the secondary teachers, 2,194 passers are first timers while 5,615 are repeaters.

The results of the most recent LEPT conducted last month have yet to be released.

Department of Tech Ed

Sen. Loren Legarda is calling for the upgrade of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) into a full-fledged department to be called the Department of Technical Education and Training, which will better provide Filipinos with the needed skills and knowledge needed for a post-pandemic economy.

Under Legarda’s Senate Bill 6, the proposed department shall be the primary government agency tasked with the promotion and development of technical education, training and certification.

“Emerging industries will necessitate institutions of learning and capacity-building a wide scale of response to the changing demand for skills. There is a need to ensure that new initiatives and the right amount of resources will further promote opportunities to address key challenges in the employment sector,” the senator said.

Legarda has been supportive of TESDA’s programs, noting its key role in upskilling Filipino workers such as the Barangay Kabuhayan Skills Training Program, Training for Work Scholarship Program and Special Training for Employment Program, all under the TESDA, benefitting Filipinos nationwide.