TESDA hits high employment rate

Six out of 10 graduates of vocational courses of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) in Davao region were able to land jobs this year, buoying up the shares of skilled workers in the various industries in the country.
TESDA Region XI (Davao Region) reported that 15,760 out of the total 25,272 trainees who completed their respective courses this year found employment after graduation.
The number of graduates was culled from the total number of enrollees which reached 35,653.  Of those who graduated, 20,510 underwent assessment, and 17,573 were issued certification as TESDA Specialista.
TESDA Director General Joel Villanueva said the figure was very encouraging as this clearly indicates that the agency is successfully achieving its mandate to train for jobs and to produce graduates that industries need.
“We are slowly coming to grips with the problem of mismatch between education choices and the skills required by businesses,” Villanueva said, adding that “at the end of the day, it’s above all an issue of quality.”
Graduates cannot just apply for jobs without taking and passing the competency assessment. More and more companies require job seekers to show proof that they possess the knowledge and skills they require.
A technical vocational graduate, who passes the assessment, is issued a certification. The TESDA certification attests the competencies of the qualification and that he has earned the right to earn the badge of excellence, that of being a TESDA Specialista.
This serves as a kind of quality assurance for TESDA graduates before they plunge in to the real world of work, said Villanueva, who was in Davao recently for the Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Industry Forum.
The forum aimed to provide the framework for evaluating the needs of the captains of the 11 industry clusters in the region. These are the prime movers of the economy involved in sectors such as banana, coconut, mango, seaweeds, woods, construction, information communication technology, livestock and poultry, machineries, tourism and mining.