YESTERDAY, September 15, TESDA’s Ladderized Education Program (LEP) turned four years old. It was on that date in 2004 when the President signed Executive Order No. 358 “to institutionalize a ladderized interface between technical-vocational education and higher education.”

Has “ladderization” served its purpose?

Let us recall that under said EO, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) are jointly mandated to develop and implement a framework establishing pathways and access ramps for a ladderized system allowing for easier transitions and progressions between technical-vocational education and college education.

“From a passive, teacher-oriented approach to gaining knowledge and skills,” TESDA Secretary Augusto “Boboy” Syjuco wrote in his book Career Guidance in Ladderized Education, “we have shifted towards learning for life and skills training centered around the individual’s focus on a progressively changing world of work.”

This shift has gradually made higher college education less necessary and vocational ones more competitive in the world market.

Increasingly, Iloilo colleges and universities are developing talents in information technology, manual skills, entrepreneurship and language skills. These skills build up a ladder for the individual’s employability, consistent with world trend.

At the Central Philippine University (CPU), for example, it is no longer necessary to finish all of four years of Bachelor of Science in Hotel and Restaurant Management (BSHRM) because the school has been TESDA-accredited to offer a one-year Commercial Cooking. This means that a student, armed with a TESDA certificate of completion, may apply for chef or cook after one year without waiting to finish the entire four years of HRM.

Admittedly, however, this system is not new, whether here or abroad. In Australia, for instance, secondary students are allowed to take technical-vocational courses at school or at private training centers.

On the other hand, long before the government’s ladderization program, the Don Bosco Technical College in Mandaluyong City had been offering a three-year Diploma in Engineering at the option of students to proceed to the B.S. Engineering course.

Judging from that model, Syjuco believes that the apprenticeship law should be amended to expand the apprenticeship period to three years and to lower the minimum apprenticeship age to 16 even if students are still in school for train-for-work programs.

Students would then finish high school with full or partial technical-vocational qualifications that would boost their prospects of qualifying for jobs.

There is now a machinery of equivalency on issuance of assessments of academic equivalency for prior learning. Equivalency is the process of assigning equivalent academic credits to the competencies demonstrated by a candidate in assessment tests, thus providing an entry point to the next higher level of qualification. It is implemented through the Expanded Tertiary Education Equivalency and Accreditation Program (ETEEAP), an educational assessment system that recognizes knowledge skills and prior learning obtained by individuals from education experiences.

Ladderized education thus allows students to enter and exit our educational system while acquiring the competencies needed to ascend and reach successively higher job platforms.

After completing the equivalency and accreditation procedures, the successful applicant is awarded equivalent credits and a college degree by the deputized college or university.

But, of course, the fortune of a student does not always rely on whether he or she has “ladderized” or finished the longer course. Take the case of nurses. For local employment, a nursing graduate would normally earn more than a caregiver (caregiving is ladderized in nursing). But a Filipino caregiver working abroad would be better off than nurses working here.

Job opportunities abroad, Secretary Syjuco has found out, are more abundant for skilled manual laborers. We know of high school dropouts who have made it out there.

One of them is a young man from Ajuy, Iloilo. Only a few years ago, Loreto “Bongbong” Caper, Jr. – a 3rd year high school dropout – was a family problem; he was doing nothing but go out with barkada. But after learning welding at TESDA, he has transformed.

Today, Bongbong is in his second year as fabricator at Ishi Kawa Jima, a Japanese company that produces airplane parts, Bongbong earns 140,000 yen a month (P68,000.00) plus 28,000 yen for food and free lodging.

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