By Ma. Cristina Arayata/Philippine News Agency
MANILA – The Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) needs the industry’s help to leverage technical and vocational education and training’s (TVET) image, an official said.
“Would a parent want his/her child to be a mechanic? Many people see tech-voc as a second-class course,” TESDA deputy director general, Rosanna Urdaneta, said at the sidelines of the One Step Ahead Forum in Makati City.
She said people have this mindset because tech-voc jobs usually offer a low salary.
“If the salary could be leveled to that of a lawyer or a nurse, then maybe the parents would push their kids (to take tech-voc),” Urdaneta said.
“We need the industry to help us in this effort,” she added.
TESDA data show that aqua-farm cultivators earn an average monthly salary of PHP7,823 while powerplant operators receive an average of PHP30,887 monthly pay.
Earlier, Luz Victoria Amponin, executive director of TESDA’s Partnerships and Linkages Office, said the TESDA has been eyeing to partner with more industries.
She said the kind of assistance that TESDA gets from industry partners depends on the agreement and the agencies’ capabilities.
Some companies provide scholarships, others donate a building, while others share their facilities.
Others get TESDA’s trainees as their interns, to expose them to their high-tech machines, while some eventually hire them.
The forum’s organizer, a multinational bank, J.P. Morgan, is among TESDA’s partner industries, Urdaneta said.
“We (also) partner with industries and TVIs (technical vocational institutions) to craft the industries’requirements. We upgrade the (skills) of our trainers,” she added.
With the rapid changes in technology, she said TESDA has to adopt the 21st-century skills.
“We need to have genuine partnerships with the industries. We must harness our training regulations, which we craft together with them,” she said.
Urdaneta added that TESDA also needs to adopt international standards so that tech-voc courses in the Philippines can be considered at par with other countries.
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