New law gives qualified Filipinos free access to technical-vocational educationAn education technology company is spearheading an accelerator program that aims to create a workforce of young skilled professionals who successfully transition to lucrative careers in technical-vocational (tech-voc) fields.
Edukasyon.ph said the tech-voc career accelerator program (TVCAP) intends to transform youth interest into a passion for tech-voc work through holistic skills development, industry training and linkages, and continuous learning.
This as tech-voc education is affordable or even free, inclusive, achievable in a shorter amount of time of less than six months, and an entry point to lucrative, skill-based careers.
It particularly identified tech-voc programs in the fields of agri-fishery arts, home economics, information and communications technology, industrial arts, and maritime.
Roland Moya, director general at the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP), said the group is conducting research on tech-voc education and training (TVET) in partnership with Edukasyon.ph.
Moya said ECOP is contributing to the study since skills development is one of its core programs.
“We believe that investing in TVET, improving its implementation and quality, is indispensable in minimizing job-skills mismatch and ensuring that employers are able to hire workers with the right skills, knowledge, competencies, and attitude to maximize productivity,” he added.
Under the tech-voc accelerator program, the research aims to understand perception on TVET and its strengths and weaknesses against higher education; determine relevant audience for TVET both demographics and psychographics; and identify unique offering of TVET that is most fit to the needs of chosen audience.
Its primary target respondents are Grade 10, College non-tech voc student, senior high school (SHS) Grade 11 and 12 technical-vocational-livelihood (TVL) students, techvoc students, parents of SHS-TVL students and techvoc students, schools with techvoc offerings, and companies that cater to tech-voc careers.
A set of industry-specific soft skills will be developed with the guidance of selected industry players.
Learners can take bite-sized learning materials from TVCAP quests, and sign-up to the program.
They then join the online bootcamp –an industry-led in-depth training on technical skills relevant to the sector.
To advance to continuous learning, bootcamp graduates participate in a community of lifelong learners and mentors who will be invited to mentoring activities to guide the future student cohorts of the online bootcamp.