TESDA to Increase Number of Scholars

September 11, 2010, 11:41am

MANILA, Philippines — The Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) aims to increase the number of scholars in its Training for Work Scholarship Program (TWSP) despite retaining its original P700-million budget, TESDA Director Joel Villanueva said on Friday.

According to a statement from TESDA, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) initially planned to reduce the budget of TESDA to P350 million this year due to the low rate of absorption of graduates by private companies.

However, Villanueva said he asked for the intervention of President Aquino to increase or maintain the budget of TESDA’s training centers to avoid any reduction in the number of its scholars.

“The President had them (DBM and DoLE) agree to grant the same budget at the fiscal year 2010 level of P700 million. But the President’s intercession was not without warranties,” Villanueva said.

TESDA received the highest budget allocation among the affiliated agencies of DoLE during the recent budget hearing for 2011 in Congress.

“The retention of the budget for TWSP in 2010 requires the TESDA Director General to ensure that requirements are seasonably complied with and reports are periodically submitted not only to the PMS (Presidential Management Staff) and DBM but to both Houses of Congress as well,” Villanueva said.

According to TESDA's statistics, the number of vocational-technical graduates continued to increase from 398,711 in 2007 to 483,482 in 2008, and 836,164 in 2009.

However, TESDA said in a report to DBM that its TWSP graduates from 2006 to 2008 only have a 28 percent absorption rate.

Villanueva said that TESDA will change TVET's current training program, by focusing on the accrediting, reporting, monitoring, and evaluating teaching institution partners to increase the absorption rate of its graduates.

“And so I directed the full implementation of the Seek-Find-Train-Certify-Employ operational cycle as applied to each and every TWSP beneficiary.

This means adopting a new management system that links operations to strategy to ensure that they are executed properly to achieve the TWSP’s stated objectives and goals,” Villanueva said.