Ladderized skills training can now start in senior high school

Just think – the piece of bread you took for breakfast was made possible by ten workers: the farmer, a driver, the miller, the packer, another driver, the baker assisted by the dough kneader and oven tender, the packaging personnel, another driver who takes the baked bread to the grocery, small sari-sari store.

Without professional skills training, the above technicians cannot produce a quality product. Professional training requires both skilled trainors and complete laboratory with functional tools. The latter requires a maintenance crew.

The cost of a model school cafeteria

Since 1983 we have called our five secondary education schools “professional high schools” because the high school curriculum provides training and practical application for entrepreneurial skills.

Let us see how much it costs to set up a professional high school cafeteria: At our main headquarters in Greenhills, where each high school level has a total of 15 classes, we serve 1,000 snacks and 400 lunch meals. The smaller cafeteria in our four other branches average 400 snacks and 150 lunch meals.

A four-burner stove with oven costs P50,000 while a two-burner high pressure stove usually custom-made costs P25,000. This allows cooking pasta, stir frying, and deep frying chicken. A big rice cooker is P8,000, Bain Marie P50,000. There are two deep sink washers for big pots, two regular sinks or lavabos. Also included are a P75,000 chiller for vegetables, fruits, sandwich filling, butter and milk, P35,000 chest freezer and P50,000 display chiller. All these are provided for each of the five schools.

The pantry stores dry items such as canned goods, pasta and eco-friendly packaging materials such as paper napkins, sandwich bags, stainless spoons and forks, plastic for takeout. Two working tables with shelf for vegetables, ingredients and seasonings, allow a group of six students to work daily.

The cafeteria has a P60,000 stainless steel counter with warmer (bain marie) for 6 dishes, a crock pot for soup or congee, extra rice cooker, a sandwich and pastry display rack, as well as a point of sales system.

There are six personnel – a professional cook, assistant cook, two stewards, a cashier and seller who operate the place. The apprentice students who have been cooking the same cafeteria dishes in their high school kitchen lab assist in food dispensing and clearing the tables. The central purchaser, who gets a revolving fund or petty cash, buys mostly from the Farmer’s Market in Cubao. The standard food prices are P40 to P80 per set meal with dishes like beef teriyaki or mushroom pork served with brown or white rice, soup and vegetables.

Imagine the cost of professional European skills training school

They call it “apprenticeship” in Europe and “dual system” in Australia and Germany. Usually it entails the last two- to three-year course of senior high school. I observed it with fascination at the KLM building in the Netherlands (Holland).

One of two KLM buildings in Amsterdam was filled with technicians, not college graduates but selected senior high school graduates allowed to practise in the airline kitchen or office. Another apprenticeship school visit grant allowed me to observe the carpentry classrooms of a public high school where all the construction tools were classified for furniture or house construction. They hang in neat rows in a cabinet so classified and systematic as in a science laboratory. A Filipino teenager student in the class told me that as a carpenter in the near future, his Dutch salary would be equivalent to a head of a company in the Philippines.

At Saarbruchen, Germany, I visited both a culinary butcher class and a welding class. The former had a laboratory where the carcasses of butchered cow, lamb and pig hang suspended in an automated ceiling line, which brought them to the butchers’ tables five meters away. The furniture class with 14 working tables and complete tools also is open to immigrants and the handicapped for training.

The ladderized training program

In 2006, when I was UNESCO National Commission Secretary General one of my Education commissioners was Dr. Nona Ricafort. She was also an active CHED commissioner and was very passionate about the Ladderized Education System. She explained that CHED and TESDA are jointly implementing Executive Order 358, the Ladderized Tertiary Education System stating, “The interfacing of the Technical Vocational Education and Training with Higher Education will allow certification or recognition of units gained in TESDA registered Tech-Voc programs for equivalent credits under CHED-recognized programs.”

Then TESDA Director General Augusto Syjuco spoke ‘On Climbing PGMA’s Ladder – From Hopelessness to Triumph’ during the launching of Ladderized Education and explained “The traditional educational system is like a tunnel with only one exit and one entrance. When a student enrols in first-year college, it becomes an all-or-nothing deal for her. Various circumstances may prevent her from finishing college. This could happen during the first or second year or one semester short of graduation, inevitably send her back to where she first started. The usual frustrating story of “a college dropout.”

Why did she fail? Usually for technical training, the hands-on practice is missing – the laboratory work, which should start as early as the first year.

Need for a realistic professional training

Secretary Syjuco added, “Enrolling in the Ladderized BSHRM Program will provide you several Job Platforms. After completing the Tech-Voc Housekeeping National Certificate II (NC II) course and passing the Competency Assessment, you can proceed to Job Platform A as a dry cleaning worker, public area attendant, room attendant or chambermaid.

“As you move up the ladder in your work, you can take more Tech-Voc courses and ascend successively to other Job Platforms. The Tech-Voc Commercial Cooking NC II is a stepping stone to Job Platform B as pantry worker, pastry cook, or hot kitchen cook. The Tech-Voc Food and Beverage Service NC II will help you rise to Job Platform C as busboy, waiter, food attendant or food server. The Tech-Voc Front Office NC II will help you climb to Job Platform D as Reservation Clerk or Front Office Agent. Meantime, the Tech-Voc Bartending NC II will attain Job Platform E as bartender.

“After reaching each Job Platform, you can have a better-paying job. More importantly, you can continue studying and alternating between work-time and study-time. There is an open gateway for you to proceed to the BSHRM Degree Program after Job Platform E without having to repeat the subjects learned in the Tech-Voc courses.”

TESDA however should further review these Job Platforms since cooks and pastry workers require more skills than busboys or waiters. What about the laboratory, do they have one? In Switzerland, housekeeping, kitchen and dining courses last for only nine months, with three months practicum in a professional hotel and restaurant. Another year will complete the management training, which includes management, accounting and budgeting, as well as front office procedures. In the Ecole culinaire in Paris, the management course can be taken after the student has worked first in a reputable restaurant which would recommend their employee fit for that advancement.

Even in the nineties when only a four-year course was required of teenage students, we have named the O.B. Montessori secondary school, the “professional high school” and properly equipped it with a voc-tech culinary kitchen and school bistro for a realistic food service experience. The school system had to recognize and satisfy the intense psychological desire of the adolescent student to be economically-independent. Now, with the extra two years of Grade 11 and Grade 12 of the K to 12 Senior High School Montessori it will be more possible to perfect the curriculum to enable the student to enter the job market.

The DepEd senior high school tech-voc track supports the TESDA/CHED ladderized program

The K to 12 basic education curriculum prepares students for work as early as Grade 7. It is the nature of the child to absorb technical skills training as early as the intermediate elementary school, leading to more commercially oriented activities in high school. Exploratory Technology and Livelihood Education (TLE) subjects are taken during Grades 7 to 8.

Much like Ladderized Education, the Senior High School (SHS) curriculum will enable students to acquire Certificates of Competency (COCs) and National Certificates (NCs). These affirm the SHS graduate middle level skills, which assure them better opportunities to be gainfully employed or become entrepreneurs. Will the Tech-Voc in K to 12 go beyond the basin and tools of Cosmetology and acquire skills in modern Beauty Science equipment and Spa service? Professional training requires complete functional tools to be effective and skilled trainors.

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