DepEd eyes solution to SHS grad employability through MATATAG agenda

The Department of Education (DepEd) on Thursday said it aims to address issues on the employability of K-12 graduates through its MATATAG education agenda.

DepEd spokesperson Michael Poa made the remark in light of the recently published report of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) showing that senior high school (SHS) graduates in the country tend to lack soft skills and job readiness, and are highly vulnerable to scams.

CHR also said teachers’ competencies do not align with the SHS program as DepEd “cannot provide as many teachers to complete all the subject areas because of the number of enrollments in one area of the school.”

For DepEd’s part, Poa said the agency already recognized such issues during the Basic Education Report which was presented by Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte in January.

“Steps to address such issues are already in the MATATAG Agenda, such as engaging with CHED, TESDA, and various industry partners to address the issue of skills mismatch in our SHS Program. This forms part of the on-going review of the SHS Curriculum, which shall consider feedback from employers and studies on SHS employability,” Poa said.

Duterte earlier announced that DepEd is set to revise the K to 12 curriculum in a bid to produce more job-ready and responsible graduates.

According to her, the ongoing review of the K-12 curriculum revealed that its content was congested; that some prerequisites of identified essential learning competencies were missing or misplaced; and that a significant number of learning competencies catered to high cognitive demands.

As for the issue on teacher quality, Poa said that capacity building for them is a priority of the agency.

“[This] will address the following: quality of entry-level teachers; unfilled teaching and teaching-related positions; ancillary tasks assigned to teachers; unequal distribution of qualified teachers; teachers not teaching their SHS specialization; and poor skills in analysis, synthesis, and evaluation which are crucial and relevant to the emerging economy,” he added.—AOL, GMA Integrated News