Senator Sherwin Gatchalian pushed anew his proposal to boost the college readiness and employability of senior high school graduates.
Gatchalian’s Batang Magaling Act (Senate Bill No. 2367) seeks to produce senior high school graduates with the knowledge, training, and skills demanded in the labor market regardless of their chosen exits: higher education, middle-level skills development, employment, or entrepreneurship.
The lawmaker emphasized the importance of addressing challenges hounding the senior high school program.
While the program promised to produce work-ready graduates, a 2020 discussion paper from the state think tank Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) revealed that only a little over 20 percent of senior high school graduates enter the labor force.
The PIDS study also revealed that compared to Grade 10 and second-year college completers, senior high school graduates have no clear statistically significant advantage or disadvantage when it comes to basic pay per day.
The proposed measure also seeks the creation of the National Batang Magaling Council, which will be composed of the DepEd, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), three national industry partners, a national labor group, and the Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines which is an umbrella organization of all leagues of local government units.
The council shall serve as the mechanism to align schools’ curricular
offerings and the work immersion component of senior high school with market needs identified by industry partners and government agencies.
It will also be mandated to increase awareness and commitment of
industry partners and government agencies to accept learners in the
work immersion programs, ensure that their deployment is done
according to their tracks, and enable learners to acquire specialized
skills and competencies to advance in their chosen paths.