Education commission chief wants NCEE revived

MANILA, Philippines — Citing calls for tighter screening of students who want to enter college, the chief of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) on Thursday said that he was in favor of reviving the defunct National College Entrance Examination (NCEE). Chairman Emmanuel Angeles, however, clarified that the introduction of an examination for students who want to enter college should be more of an aptitude test. “Students graduating from high school who would want to go to college will take an Aptitude Test and the results of which will be used to classify them into two groups," he said. The first group will include those who will go to the pre-college or the Technical Vocational Evaluation Test track and the second are those who will go to the university college track. In 1994, then Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary Raul Roco signed the abolition of the NCEE, saying that he wanted all high school students to be able to enter college and have a chance of a better career in the future. Critics, however, said the removal of the NCEE only led to many ambitious but academically challenged students wasting their parents’ money by taking degree courses. On the other hand, Angeles said that the reestablishment of the NCEE or an aptitude test is one of the reform measures that the commission proposed in order to improve the higher education quality in the country. The program is part of CHED’s program to improve quality assurance through the design/introduction of a multi-track tertiary education system that the Commission has identified as one of their priority concern. Angeles said the implementation of the multi-track tertiary system “would require a strong testing and evaluation system to determine and address the preparedness needs/aptitude of high school graduates for TVET, polytechnic or university/college track." According to Commission, the program’s implementation has a budgetary requirement of at least P10 million. Earlier, CHED asked Congress to provide it an additional P1.56 billion on top of the P1.5 billion already earmarked for the Commission for 2009. The proposal to re-introduce the NCEE was aired by several sectors saying that it would upgrade the quality of tertiary education in the country while at the same addressing the growing problem of job mismatch among college graduates. The Education department has implemented a similar tack, the National Career Assessment Exam (NCAE), to measure students’ technical-vocational capabilities as well as entrepreneurial skills, therefore providing an overview as to the particular direction one could take after finishing secondary schooling. The NCAE has been repeatedly criticized by educational organizations but DepEd Secretary Jesli Lapus has strongly supported it, saying it would address the employment mismatch and ensure students know what course to take in college based on their aptitude. - GMANews.TV