The TESDA-BIBB agreement

In his statement at his press conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Federal Republic of Germany last Sept. 19 in Berlin, President Benigno S. Aquino III said, “The cooperation between TESDA and BIBB will institutionalize regular dialogue and sharing of best practices between Filipino and German policymakers and experts, and will provide an institutional foundation to expand practical cooperation between our respective ministries as well as with the private sector. I am told that German technical expertise was instrumental in the development of the Philippines’ Dual Training System Act of 1994, and we continue to harness that expertise towards our mutual gain.”

President Aquino was referring to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between our Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and Germany’s Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training or Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung (BIBB), signed during his visit to Germany. This was one of two agreements signed that had to do with vocational training or what we call Tech-Voc. (I will write about the other agreement in a future column.)

The agreement has crucial implications for the K to 12 educational reform. But first, we need to know more about the parties involved.

TESDA, of course, is one of the three education agencies of our government (the two others being the Department of Education or DepEd and the Commission on Higher Education or CHED). TESDA merged the old National Manpower and Youth Council and Apprenticeship Program of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and the Bureau of Technical and Vocational Education of the old Department of Education, Culture, and Sports (DECS). The old DECS was divided into the three agencies because of the recommendations of the 1990 Congressional Commission on Education to Review and Assess Philippine Education (EDCOM).

TESDA is just as important to education as DepEd and CHED. It is as much a part of the formal education system as the two others. The so-called trifocal system of educational governance should be viewed as a triangle, with all three vertices (or points, if you have forgotten your geometry) as equally necessary for the triangle or system to exist.

In his ten-point agenda for education, Pres. Aquino promised to incorporate technical vocational education as an alternative stream in senior high school. As he put it, “I will reintroduce technical-vocational education in our public high schools to better link schooling to local industry needs and employment. We need to provide an educational alternative to better prepare the students for the world of work.”

It is clear that a key reason for setting up Senior High School (SHS) was to prepare students for immediate employment in technical and vocational fields. (Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, tech-voc became only one of four tracks in SHS, when it should have been the main track, with the other tracks being secondary. On this, I will write in future columns.)

Since DepEd does not have the expertise to handle tech-voc courses (since its bureau handling that was incorporated into TESDA), TESDA has become the lead agency for the Technical-Vocational-Livelihood track of SHS. In practice, this has been done through close coordination between TESDA experts and DepEd experts, with DepEd creating its curriculum based on TESDA’s training regulations.

On the other hand, BIBB is Germany’s federal government institution for policy, research, and practice in the field of vocational education and training. The word “federal” may puzzle Filipino readers. Unlike the Philippines, Germany has a federal system. It has a central Government and sixteen States.

Unlike the Philippines, where educational policy is determined by DepEd, CHED, and TESDA (all based in Manila, although they have regional or local offices outside the capital), the German states determine their own educational policies. Among BIBB’s many roles is to promote adherence to the Vocational Training Act of 2005, known as Berufsbildungsgesetz (BBiG).

Why does the abbreviation of the German law combine capital and small letters? Because, as Mark Twain put it in his “The Awful German Language,” “A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is.” I had to study German to get my physics undergraduate degree at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, and the little German I learned then is only good enough to get me through the first two sentences in greeting my many German friends.

From the German law and from our own Republic Act 7686 with its kilometric title of “An Act to Strengthen Manpower Education and Training in the Philippines by Institutionalizing the Dual Training System as an Instructional Delivery System of Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Providing the Mechanism, Appropriating Funds therefor and for Other Purposes,” best referred to as the “Dual Training System Act of 1994,” we can define the terms in the MOU signed in Germany during the President’s visit. (To be continued)