DepEd and tech-voc education

DepEd is reported to be reviving its technical-vocational division purportedly in connection with its K+12 program. A strange move really because TESDA is supposed to handle this type of instruction. Before TESDA was created in 1994 there was such a body under the education department. Do you remember the bureau of technical-vocational education? This used to be a big agency handling the training of students in vocational high schools and in trade schools. It was an effective set-up then, although there was the usual tug-of-war between the “academics” and the technical people. But under one authority, that of the secretary of education, coordination and collaboration characterized its operation.

Now with TESDA being directly under the office of the President, that synchrony exists only on papers. It’s true there’s a TESDA Board chaired by the DOLE secretary and co-chaired by the DepEd chief, but like other clusters of agencies, it is “kanya-kanya” as far as actual operations are concerned.

Recently, I asked a TESDA executive what that agency’s roles are in DepEd’s K+12 program. The answer was vague and indefinite although the usual motherhood statement was uttered.  Perhaps, it’s TESDA’s lukewarm concern on DepEd’s curricular reform that made the latter revive its own tech-voc program.

Perhaps too, the education leadership seems to be uneasy with the kind of technical training TESDA is rendering considering its focus only on skills training for employment purposes. One needs only to look at the five-fold objectives of that agency as spelled out in RA 7796 to be convinced that its mandate is basically that of technical education and skills development. Personal values? Work ethics? Self- discipline? These are mentioned but only at the last. A mere afterthought?

Most probably, but this should not be taken against that office, after all it has proven its worth the past eighteen years in the field of job training, especially for non-schooling youth. Proofs of this are the thousands of young people currently working locally and abroad after getting exposed to its no-nonsense skill development regimen.

Values internalization, however, could be only peripheral to its concern, probably for the reason that this task belongs primarily to the home, the church and the school. It’s actually a character formation process involving the mind and heart of the individual plus his relationship with the Almighty. Its target is the whole man, that’s why one talks of holistic education in schools and in other educative areas. This is of course a very complicated process and even with these three values-teaching agencies working hard to produce an ideal citizenry, still their efforts seem to fall short of the desired outcomes.

With its tech-voc office, what does DepEd hope to achieve? Most probably a curriculum framework aligned with its thrust of nurturing the full potential of its students. In this way every step of the latters’ stay in school would be supportive of its over-all objective of producing an enlightened mainstream equipped with livelihood skills and inspired with the values of love, service and faith in God.

This action of DepEd is indicative of the discomfort felt by many of the present education structure of the country. Having been chop-chopped into three authorities, it has become unwieldy and ineffective not to mention the huge amount of money needed to operate the system. In fact, prior to the creation of CHED and TESDA Philippine education was turning out high quality professionals and middle level career individuals at a very much less budgetary outlay. And yet even with a presidential commission keeping an eye on tertiary education, our colleges and universities, surveys show, seem to be falling behind those of our Asian neighbors. It appears that the taxpayers’ money of billions of pesos allotted annually for this educational sector seems to be unproductive ROI-wise.

Now there are talks of fusing again these three education bodies into one. Can Congress muster enough political will for this move?