Low workforce educational level
The poor performance of Filipino students in the 2022 assessment made by the Organization for Economic Development, through its Program for International Student Assessment, does not bode well for the country.
The assessment tracked the capacity of 15-year-olds in 81 countries to use their reading, mathematics and knowledge skills to meet real life challenges. The Philippines ranked 76th in reading comprehension, mathematics and science. Singapore was at the top of the rung, while Cambodia was at the bottom. Sadly, the Palestinian Authority, which governs a small nation that has been racked with violence for years in its relations with Israel, ranked higher than the Philippines in those areas. Ouch!
According to the Department of Education (DepEd), that assessment means Filipino students are five to six years behind learning competencies.
Why that happened is a puzzler considering that the DepEd gets the highest allocation in the national budget every year by express provision of the Constitution.
(By uncanny coincidence, those years seem to jibe with the term of the Duterte administration. Where did the billions of pesos go? Go figure.)
Considering the high cost of education in the Philippines, many of those students may opt to look for gainful employment after graduating from elementary or high school.
But because of their limited education, only unskilled or semi-skilled labor that often only pays the minimum wage may be available to them.
For those who have the means to pursue further studies, their inadequacies in reading, mathematics and science could adversely affect their ability to satisfactorily meet the requirements of tertiary education.
Bear in mind that a weak high school foundation could make college education challenging unless remedial measures are immediately taken to address that weakness.
With some 1.6 million Filipinos graduating yearly from the country’s colleges and universities, the competition for job opportunities in the public and private sectors is very tight.
What’s more, due to a serious mismatch between the academic training of those graduates and available work positions, many of them wind up unemployed or underemployed. According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, as of July 2023, approximately 2.27 million Filipinos are unemployed, which represent 4.8 percent of the country’s eligible workforce.No doubt, the poor quality of education of the Filipino youth from which the business sector draws its human resources would have an adverse effect on its operation.
When businesses hire new or additional staff, they expect the new hires to be able to competently take on their assigned tasks after a brief orientation or while going through the standard six-month probationary period.
There is a whale of a difference between what is written in the curriculum vitae (CV) submitted by a job applicant and his or her true qualifications for the position that he or she is applying for.
Unless found out in the course of the interview or competency tests, the actual academic qualifications of an applicant cannot be deduced from his or her CV. And if he or she happens to be a glib talker, no further questions are asked by an impressed interviewer.
So he or she gets employed. Although requiring new employees to first undergo a training or apprenticeship-like program before they are taken in may be useful, some businesses, especially those with limited staff, balk at that idea for financial or exigency reasons.
Not only would that arrangement entail some costs, it would also negate the purpose for which new staff is brought in, that is, to address the need for additional warm bodies to meet the operational requirements of the business.
A tough job lies ahead for the DepEd to improve the Philippines’ student assessment rating and, most importantly, the quality of education of the Filipino youth.
Verily, that would require the expertise of an academically skilled and experienced educator, not a politician. INQ
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