Business leaders and industry players agreed the need to improve the quality of the country’s technical-vocational education and training as critical part in the multisectoral efforts to upskill and reskill Filipino workers to ensure they remain globally competitive.
"Reshaping tech-voc and improving its quality means that industry must be more involved. For industries, we need to send the right signals on job demand and outlook, including communicating the opportunities available in the techvoc space. We need to make sure that the right competencies are captured in training programs, and we have to put our skin in the game by being more involved in work-based training,” PBEd President Chito Salazar said.
To encourage private-sector led work-based training and promote TVET as career choice for the youth, PBEd is also implementing the YouthWorks PH program in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development. Since 2018, the program has already provided over 15,000 TVET-related work-based training opportunities to unemployed, out-of-school youth. Almost 1,000 youths have since graduated from the program, where 70% have been absorbed right after training.