PH leads US in Apprenticeships

“For more than thirty years now, the Dualtech Foundation has trained more than 10,000 skilled workers for companies like Intel, Mitshubishi, Toyota, Philip Morris, San Miguel Corporation, Intel, and Lufthansa Technik through this German model. Much before President Obama, then President Fidel Ramos encouraged Congress in the mid-1990s to pass a law requiring technical or vocational schools in the Philippines to adopt the German dualvoc system. The model schools are run by the Dualtech Foundation in Metro Manila and by the Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE) in Cebu. The typical students in these schools come from some of the poorest households in impoverished districts, teenagers who could barely eat one square meal a day. After they are trained in these apprenticeship programs, these youth who are in their early twenties, are able to earn close to twenty thousand pesos a month and can significantly contribute to the support of their families.

Now that basic education in the Philippines is moving towards the K + 12 curriculum, a good number of industries needing technical skills, from the BPO sector and tourism to manufacturing and agribusiness are planning to adopt the dualvoc method, emulating the Dualtech example in transforming the last two years of high school (Years 11 and 12) into a dual training program in partnership with selected high schools. This adoption of the German model will address the serious mismatch between the products of our schools and the types of skills needed by the business sector. The Philippines was overly influenced by the US system in the past and, with the exception of the Dualtech initiative, was also unfamiliar with the apprenticeship program until the 1980s. Thanks to the track record of Dualtech and CITE, it will be easier to convince more Filipino youth to follow the tech-voc path instead of enrolling in colleges that produce unemployable graduates.”

Read more at http://www.mb.com.ph/ph-leads-us-in-apprenticeships/#ppxyT5X4RM3fCCrE.99

by Bernardo M. Villegas
Manila Bulettin, March 30, 2014