CHEd to expand teacher training beyond Cambodia

MENTORING MENTORS The Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) will link up with the country’s foreign posts to train more Filipino teachers abroad. —PHOTO FROM CHED FACEBOOK PAGE

After a successful pilot run in Cambodia, a Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) program that seeks to improve the skills of Filipinos teaching overseas to help them qualify for promotions and higher salaries will be introduced in other countries.

In a recent statement, CHEd Chair Prospero de Vera III announced that 16 Filipinos working in Cambodia passed the Philippine license examination for professional teachers, which was given in September in Bangkok, Thailand.

Of the 16, six were products of the agency’s Developing Global Filipino Teachers (DGFT) pilot program, a joint initiative between the CHEd and the Philippine Embassy in Phnom Penh launched in October 2020. It aims to “equip, capacitate and enhance the competencies of Filipino teachers in Cambodia” to allow them to land better teaching positions and higher salaries.

Nurturing

“After the successful pilot of the international DGFT program in Cambodia, the commission will work with our Foreign Service Posts to reach more overseas Filipino teachers,” De Vera said.

According to him, the program has so far benefited 1,006 Filipinos who have yet to pass the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) exam for teachers.

“They are sought after here in Cambodia as they don’t just teach and educate; they also nurture their students,” said Philippine Ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia Amelia Aquino.

The DGFT was conceptualized after the Philippine Embassy in Phnom Penh alerted the CHEd in 2019 about the plight of some 1,152 Filipinos working there as teachers. Over 1,000 of them were receiving low salaries despite their many years in service because they were not licensed by the PRC, according to De Vera.

To help them, the CHEd asked for assistance from three Philippine universities considered centers of excellence in teacher education: Saint Paul University, Cebu Normal University, and Philippine Normal University.

According to De Vera, the program is designed to equip Filipino teachers with the necessary competencies in important dimensions of the teaching profession, 21st-century pedagogy, global citizenship and internationalization, digital literacy, and ethical values.

Preparation

In particular, the DGFT helps Filipino professionals in Cambodia who are not education graduates and want to take the PRC exam for teachers and education graduates who are not yet licensed. It also assists in-service teachers who wish to enhance their competencies and impact in the classroom and beyond to understand global issues, as well as those teaching English to non-English speakers.

Earlier this year, a study conducted by the Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) revealed that the country’s education system was not correctly preparing teachers to provide quality education to students.

Based on an analysis of 12 years’ worth of data taken from the PRC website regarding teacher licensure examinations and from CHEd, the PBEd said that more than half, or 56 percent, of local schools offering teacher education had posted below-average passing rates since 2010.

In an earlier interview with the Inquirer, Karol Mark Yee, Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom 2) executive director, said the commission was looking into teaching training and the license examination for teachers after the PRC gave them a copy of the test questions.

“When they (PRC officials) turned it over, they said, ‘This is the first time in our history that we are sharing this and having someone else, apart from the board, have access to this. But we understand the work of Edcom and we support its intentions, so here it is,” Yee said.

Edcom 2 is a congressional body tasked to undertake a three-year-long comprehensive assessment and evaluation of the performance of the Philippine education sector and submit its recommendations.

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