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TESDA includes Dualtech Center in Enterprise-Based Training promotional video material

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The Skills Gap Is Here to Stay. The skills gap will always be there because of the speed at which technology advances. TESDA-EBT aims to narrow the gap in a fast and timely manner.

At the rate technology is advancing Technical Vocational Institutions (TVI) can hardly keep up in purchasing the latest equipment. To acquire a basic CNC lathe machine, for example, will cost millions. Funds they (TVIs) do not have. In the guise of CSR, companies donate outdated and barely functioning machines.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR4.0), which is the ongoing automation of traditional manufacturing and industrial practices using modern smart technology, will require many skilled workers. An ADB study points out “Many TVET systems worldwide are not adequately equipped to respond to the technological change resulting from Industry 4.0. In several countries, education outcomes and employers’ needs are still disconnected. This finding is consistent with feedback from employers on the difficulty of recruiting workers with the required skills.”

With no gear to train in and with machines that belong in a museum, the TVIs hands are bound. How will the students learn? How will students familiarize themselves on machines that are actually being used in factories?

This is where the Enterprise-Based Training of TESDA meets the gaps from training to employment. In a promotional audio visual presentation project, TESDA partners with Dualtech Center in presenting one of the preferred training modalities in the EBT – the Dual Training System (DTS). The EBT program reinforces the adoption of an industry-led manpower development strategy to improve productivity and product quality, and enhance trainees’ employability with emphasis on work ethics development. It has always been proven that the best place to acquire skills is in the workplace.

Strengthening and expanding the implementation of the EBT is one of the main thrusts of TESDA. In a speech, TESDA Secretary Isidro Lapeña acknowledged TESDA’s engagement with industries as well as the harmonization of skills and standards for a brighter opportunity for the Filipino workforce. “We intend to further deepen our engagement and work toward the facilitation of job opportunities to our graduates,” Lapeña added.

Former TESDA Director General, now Senator Joel Villanueva, said the best workers that companies could hire are those coming from the pool of graduates that had hands-on training in the workplace. “This is a sure-fire solution to the job-skill mismatch because the companies will have a hand in training the students with the skills they need for a particular job,” Villanueva said.

The Dual Training System (DTS) has been tested and proven to be an effective training-modality. DTS, is an instructional mode of delivery for technology-based education and training in which learning takes place alternately in two venues: the school or training center and the company.

In DTS, the school adopts to the standards of the company’s hiring requirements, technology, equipment and facilities. The trainee, therefore, is purposively fit to train and possibly be hired to work in the factory. DTS, due to its practical training aspect, may be able to solve youth unemployment and skills gap problems in the Philippines particularly for those who have finished vocational training or high school education.

Dualtech Training Center (www.dualtech.org.ph) is the pioneer implementer of DTS. Established in 1982, Dualtech slowly developed its curriculum, company partners, donors and benefactors that enabled the school to endure throughout the years. Today, Dualtech has over a hundred partners, over a thousand students fulfilling their in-plant training and over 13 thousand alumni. Students have come from Ilocos up north and Basilan down south. Students from Leyte and Catanduanes in the Pacific coast and Palawan in the West Philippine Sea are also enrolled.

While the skills gap (or skills miss-match) exists and is a huge constraint to the development of the private sector, the EBT addresses this perennial problem. In a speech, launching the EBT Program in Davao, Sec. Lapeña “acknowledged the invaluable role of industries in developing a more demand-driven training delivery that will ensure the matching supply of trained workers with the demand for trained workers in each industry.” Through the EBT, TESDA and industry continue to work together with the common goal of establishing a harmonious business community.

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