English-only zones in public schools?

If they can set up special zones for smoking, maybe they can do the same for English. 

In the hope of recapturing the Filipino’s reputation for English proficiency, the government is now considering the possibility of enforcing "English-only" zones in public high schools nationwide.

Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) Commissioner Damian Mapa said the imposition of English-only zones — or areas where students would be required to speak English — was among several recommendations submitted to the Department of Education (DepEd)

Other recommendations include improving the English proficiency of high school and college students by designating one-third of classroom time to conversational English and mounting an "English is cool" campaign.

Mapa said the campaign is not only meant to improve English proficiency among students but also to encourage them to take up careers in call centers and other cyber-services.

He said there is a need for the government, particularly DepEd, to review its curriculum in order to enable the country to fill the growing demand for "cyberspace" workers.

"To avoid job rejection due to poor English proficiency, we must be able to regain such skills and prepare our students for jobs in the cyberspace industry," Mapa said.

The cyberspace industry — including website design and telecommunications jobs — currently employs 153,000 workers but Mapa said it is projected to become bigger than the tourism industry in the coming years.

"It is expected to generate one million jobs and revenue of $11.7 billion for the country by 2010," Damian noted.

Mapa said the country could easily fill the manpower requirement of the cyberspace industry from the 500,000 students graduating and from those who are jobless and underemployed if they could be trained to speak fluent English.

For his part, Labor Undersecretary for Employment Danilo Cruz admitted growth in the local cyberspace industry could be hampered by the actual or projected shortage of English-speaking workers.

But Cruz assured the people the government is now looking into possible measures to curb the looming shortage of workers who speak English fluently.

"For years we have been concentrating on the generation of jobs but the labor department is now focusing on the generation of right workers so we could fill up the demand for the cyberspace industry," he said.

Cruz added that the the labor department is holding a national manpower summit on March 2 in a bid to generate the right skills and bring down the structural unemployment problem in the country.