Education needs overhaul to compete globally--Gordon

Independent Senator Richard J. Gordon today said that the country's educational system needs a major overhaul to be at par with other nations and to produce more globally-competitive graduates.

Gordon said there is an urgent need to upgrade the quality of the country's educational system to attune the education sector's curriculum to jobs that are available here and abroad especially in this time of a global economic crisis.

"Our educational system needs overhaul to compete globally. We need to attune the school curriculum to the needs of the employment sector," he said.

Leaders in the recruitment industry say that the country's education system focuses too much on famous courses but fails to provide qualified graduates for jobs required abroad, thereby increasing the number of unemployed and underemployed population.

In the study of Lito Soriano, executive director of the Federated Associations of Manpower Exporters, Inc., he said that of the one million college graduates annually, five to ten percent are employed in jobs consisted to their course, 30 to 40 percent will find any employment and the vast majority of graduates will remain unemployed.

Gordon, however, said that of same importance with upgrading the school curriculum is addressing the urgent needs in educational infrastructures.

"We have to start solving the problem from below," he said.

"The first step is to address the basic needs of the educational system, which are infrastructures and facilities, so that eventually we can focus on the continuous updating of the curriculum and improving the content and system of teaching," he added.

Government figures show that at present the country's public school system lacks at least 12,000 classrooms, four million seats, 63 million textbooks, 39,000 teachers and 8,000 principals.

Moreover, there is a need for more health manpower, continuous and effective feeding program, comprehensive medical and dental treatment for pupils and their teachers, establishment of fully functional school clinics, and increase in the salary of teachers.

Gordon, chairman of the Senate committee on government corporations and public enterprises, has been espousing a proposal that aims to improve the country's educational and health care systems.

The proposal, logged as Senate Bill 2402, seeks to create the Health and Education Acceleration Program (HEAP) Corporation that will spearhead the rehabilitation and improvement of education and health care infrastructures in over 43,000 public schools nationwide.

It seeks to tap excess profits of telecommunications companies by requiring them to remit to the HEAP Fund a small percentage of their net income from local text messaging.