DepEd, RAFI to pilot ICT track for senior high in Cebu

DepEd Regional Director Juliet Jeruta says the basic ICT track does not meet the requirements of business process outsourcing companies. /Irene R. Sino Cruz

CEBU CITY, Philippines -A group of incoming senior high students will be the first to join a pilot program offering information communication technology (ICT) track in the municipality of Liloan, Cebu.

Regional Director Juliet Jeruta of the Department of Education (DepEd) in Central Visayas said they will be starting the new ICT track in the school year 2019-2020 at the Don Bosco campus in Liloan, in partnership with the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. (RAFI).

DepEd-7 entered into a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) extending its Adopt-A-School program with Don Bosco Liloan in September last year.

This MOA also included a partnership with RAFI for the construction of a school building within the Don Bosco Liloan campus for the additional Senior High School ICT track. The school offers two tracks – the General Academic Strand (GAS) and the Technical-Vocational-Livelihood (TVL) strand.

According to Jeruta, the new school building will have 12 classrooms. The new ICT track will be open to Grade 10 students from Liloan town. Those who would like to enroll in the track would have to undergo screening since the school could only accommodate 80 students.

She disclosed that the new school building funded by RAFI would have state-of-the-art facility. The total project cost is P100 million, but the initial funding was estimated at P20 million, Jeruta told CDN Digital.  DepEd would evaluate the quality of graduates produced by the school in 2021, she said.

“Our future aspiration is to bring the same track to other areas in the region,” Jeruta said.

She explained that they decided to initiate the pilot project in response to the clamor of the ICT industry for improvement in the senior high graduates’ ICT skill so they could match the skills required by the call center and business process outsourcing companies.

In a forum organized by RAFI and attended by ICT industry stakeholders, Jeruta said, they learned that the basic ICT track taught in senior high schools did not meet the industry requirement.

Meanwhile, DepED has been in collaboration and coordination with BPO companies in Cebu, through the work immersion program as part of the senior high track.  Some senior high students have started earning during the work immersion phase.

Jeruta disclosed that some students of the Mabolo National High School received P12,500 in allowance from Qualfon.

She also noted that in the recent job fair held in Cebu City, 40 percent of the senior high school graduates applying for jobs have been hired on the spot./dcb