Regulatory failure

With the high fees charged by learning and review centers, there should be tighter regulation of the education sector. Despite the decline in the quality of Philippine education, Filipinos still pin their hopes on improving their lot in life through education.

Providing education has become one of the most profitable enterprises in this country. The government should at least see to it that people get value for their money.

Instead we see a high failing rate in professional licensure examinations. Or else we are treated to periodic scandals involving cheating in licensure exams.

Now thousands of nursing graduates have been tainted by the apparent leakage of several test questions in the nursing board exams two months ago.

The entire Philippine nursing corps has in fact been tainted by the cheating scandal. We should not be comforted by reassurances from one placement agency that it’s competence that matters, and jobs still await Philippine nurses in the United States. How does one gauge competence when evaluating a job application? Surely school records and the results of professional board exams carry weight.

When other countries are competing for the same jobs, there is no room for complacency. As management gurus keep preaching, in a highly competitive environment, quality means survival. We should clean up our act and guarantee the competence of our workforce. We must consider Philippine education in a state of calamity, and respond accordingly, as we do when faced with national disaster.

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Cleaning up our act means cleaning up the Professional Regulation Commission. In any leakage of questions in a test administered by the PRC, the commission has to be the one that first springs a leak.

We don’t know if the leakage is deliberate, or if test questions are carelessly left around in PRC offices for easy pilferage.

We won‘t know unless further investigation is conducted, but who will investigate? The thought of yet another congressional probe makes it tempting to just let bygones be bygones, forget the scandal and let all the examinees take their oaths.

We still don’t know for sure if the resigned head of the nursing association, who happens to own two review centers for nursing exams, is liable for the leakage.

What we do know is that there should be tighter regulation of all review centers. And, for that matter, all nursing schools. And again, for that matter, all schools.

You can sympathize with the thousands of examinees who passed the nursing exams without cheating, and who are now pressing the government to allow them to take their oaths. Nursing, though a popular course, is not easy for the typical graduate of Philippine high schools who nearly flunked his science and math subjects.

Neither is the course easy on the pockets. A little-known nursing college in Metro Manila can charge about P30,000 per semester; the top private universities can charge more.

Those from low-income families who want a career in health care have to settle for six-month care-giving courses or a one-year course to become nursing assistants. Schools offering these short courses have also mushroomed, charging about P15,000 per semester for the nursing aide course. Is anyone regulating the services offered by these institutions?

Review centers are largely left to do as they please. I know children who took review classes for the assessment test for graduating elementary students a few years ago. They ended up laughing at the grammatical and factual mistakes in their review materials.

Even the services offered by kiddie schools are not regulated. You entrust your child to these playschools at your own risk.

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This situation is not surprising, considering that when regulatory bodies try to do their job, their efforts are stymied by influential people.

Last year Dominican educator Rolando de la Rosa quit as chairman of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) after Malacañang reversed the commission’s order to shut down 23 nursing schools across the country whose graduates have performed poorly in nursing board exams. Malacañang issued the order reportedly at the behest of Las Piñas Rep. Cynthia Villar.

The commission’s woes continued this year, with members of the Technical Committee on Nursing Education resigning en masse to dramatize the CHED’s inability to improve quality and promote excellence in nursing education. The committee members decried political and business interests that have stumped CHED’s efforts to carry out its mandate.

Of the country’s 460 nursing schools, 40 have zero passing rates for their graduates in the licensure exams. Only about a dozen can boast of a 90 percent passing rate, making them outstanding by CHED standards. The majority barely make it past the eight percent passing rate.

Approximately 100,000 students are enrolled in nursing courses in the country, and the number continues to grow. Not necessarily because there is an acute shortage of nurses around the country, but because there is an acute shortage of health professionals, particularly nurses, around the world. Nursing has become the preferred ticket out of poverty, and a sure ticket out of our country — the realization of The Filipino Dream.

It’s not just the Filipino, however, who is seeking jobs overseas. Many other developing countries have seen the economic advantages of exporting their human resources. And they are making sure their exports are armed with better training than the competition.

Our workers are already losing one of their traditional assets – English proficiency. If the credibility of our professional board examinations is compromised, we will be seeing more Filipino job applicants being bypassed for competitors from other countries. And this will happen not just in the nursing profession.

We have enough competent people to carry out the difficult task of promoting excellence in education. As in many other aspects of life in this country, however, big business and politics keep getting in the way.