DepEd to hold career exam next month

The Department of Education (Dep­Ed) announced yesterday that it will administer a National Career Assessment Examination (NCAE) for fourth year students on Aug. 28.

“Following the success of the NCAE early this year, we are conducting the test for this school year early. This will give our students the opportunity to use their results as a guide in assessing their inclinations before they apply for their tertiary education,” Education Secretary Jesli Lapus said in a statement.

DepEd is making an aggressive push to promote technical-vocational (tech-voc) education and training as a viable path for high school graduates before going on to college.

The Commission on Higher Education (CHED), on the other hand, is urging schools to “ladderize” their college programs by infusing tech-voc education and skills training in the first two years of the curriculum, ensuring that a college student learns tech-voc skills even if he or she does not finish the four or five year college course.

The NCAE aims to enable students and parents to better assess career options based on the student’s own skills and propensity towards various fields of interest. The test will evaluate not only their academic aptitude, but also their technical and vocational capacities, as well as entrepreneurial skills.

The NCAE was developed by the DepEd’s National Education Testing and Research Center (NETRC) in consultation with testing experts from the Center for Educational Measurement. The NETRC will oversee the administering of the test to some 1.5 million private and public high school students.

The results of the NCAE administered to high school graduates of 2007 showed that more than half of the 1.3 million students who took the exam showed poor aptitude to take up college studies. – Rainier Allan Ronda