By Gabriela Baron
Pandemic graduates were having difficulty finding jobs, citing lack of soft skills, according to a study conducted by the Commission on Human Rights (CHR).
In its report, the CHR noted that young workers, including senior high school graduates “find themselves competing against more people – some of whom have more relevant work experience than they do — for less available jobs.”
“New experienced graduates experience culture shock upon entering the workplace because their expectations differ from what they were taught at school, and some fail to adjust to their work and decide to resign but have a hard time being hired again,” the report read.
“Another employer participant comments that their company is particular on the soft skills of fresh graduates during their recruitment process, making them undergo a behavioral exam conducted by registered psychometricians from which they also based their interview questions,” it further read.
It continued that it is “because they have observed that technical skills are easier taught than soft skills or those related to empathy, creativity, resilience, and communication skills”
It also noted that the school-to-work transition “has indeed become difficult for the youth.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the youth’s education and training as schools have shifted to different learning modalities,” it stated.
“At the same time, many companies have shut down or downsized and turned their recruitment processes online,” it added.
Poor learning assessment
Citing a report by the World Bank, CHR said “there is a crisis in education–which started pre-COVID-19, but will have been made worse by COVID-19.”
The report likewise noted that 80% of children “do not know what they should know” in school.
The CHR noted that poor learning results were observed among students in the Philippines across three assessments.
These include Program for International Student Assessment, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, and Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics.
“The Philippines ranked last in reading and second to the last in science and mathematics among 79 countries, and ranked last in both mathematics among 578 countries,” it added.
Also citing Philippine Statistics Authority data, CHR said the youth labor force participation rate in April 2022 was at 34.8%, lower compared to the reported estimate of 38.2% in the same period in 2021.
Meanwhile, in terms of educational attainment, the Institute of Labor Studies of senior high school graduates rose from 4% in 2018 to 19.5% in 2019.
Education gap exacerbated by digital divide
The Philippines, which ranks 79th among 86 countries with the least affordable internet and 84th among those with the slowest and least stable internet, has exacerbated the education gap by the digital divide, the CHR noted.
This became evident during the implementation of distance learning and flexible learning.
“Disruptions to education and training have profound effects on the youth employability and employment, such as in the form of increases household work burdens due to school closures, particularly for women, who in the context of limited family resources, also have a greater possibility of withdrawing from school as their education is deemed least important than men’s,” the report also read.
Lack of teachers
The same report also found that there is a lack of teachers in senior high school and their competencies are “not aligned” with the program.
“For instance, one participant from a university relates that while revising the curriculum to address the K to 12 Program in their institution, the Biology subjects were dropped because Biology in their senior high school was being taught by an English teacher who was a Filipino major,” the report further noted.
“[Department of Education] cannot provide as many teachers to complete all the subject areas because of the number of enrollments in one area of the school,” it added.
Moreover, the report stressed that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing issues in the state of the country’s education with the shift to modular and distance learning. -ag
