President Marcos said the government needs "to do something else" to ensure better employability for graduates, citing that the K-to-12 curriculum failed to provide good results in terms of employment.
Marcos recognized that among the objectives in pushing for the K-to-12 curriculum was to improve employability among graduates, however, he claimed that there has been no improvement in the results.
"If you remember, ginawa natin yung K-12 dahil hinahanap ang years of training sa ating mga nag-a-apply at sinasabi dito sa Pilipinas, kulang dahil 10 years lang, kailangan 12 years (we pushed for K-12 because the required years of training upon job employment is 12 years, the Philippines was only giving 10 years). So, that was the reason we did it para employable yung mga graduate natin (to make the graduates employable)," Marcos said in an ambush interview in Sulu on Friday, July 5.
"Pero kung titingnan natin ang naging resulta, hindi naging --- hindi tumaas, hindi gumanda ang employability nila (But if we look at the result, it did not increase, their employability did not improve). So, we have to do something else," Marcos stressed.
He made the statement when asked if the incoming Education secretary Sonny Angara's appointment would mean a shift in the country's education policy, to which he responded with “ maybe a little bit."
By "doing something else" Marcos intends to look into creating short courses for specialty training, and linking the students to the private sector.
"[W]e were examining things like mini courses, yung mga tatlong buwan, anim na buwan, one year, short courses para sa mga specialty (three months, six months, one year, short courses for specialty)," Marcos said.
"But we have to coordinate with the private sector so that the private sector will have also be able to have a guaranteed supply of skilled workers that will be coming into their own industry," he added, stressing that it would also ensure the employability of students who underwent training for a certain skill or specialty.
The President further said that they are also looking into the improvement of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) strand curriculum.
"The second part that we are looking at, of course, are the results in the international objective test that we are getting, especially in the STEM subjects because that's where we are falling behind and that is the area --- that is most in demand right now because we're getting more and more technical," Marcos said.
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