The demand for quality global education and the nature of the 21st century workplaces require for a responsive educational policy. Across the world, a number of long-term trends such as globalization and marketization impact national education policies. This led to the development of various frameworks that aim to provide quality education across all educational levels and programs. One of which is the ASEAN Qualifications Reference Framework (AQRF) that facilitated the development of the Philippine Qualifications Framework (PQF).
Thus, to address the present situation, a National Admission Policy for Incoming Teacher Education Applicants must be institutionalized. This will facilitate the selection of high quality potential Education Students who shall become the teacher applicants in the Teacher Education Institutions (TEIs).
Dr. Rita May Tagalog presented the different selection processes in international setting when entering teacher education. In the Philippines, students who fail to enter on their desired degree program would transfer into teacher education program. She also presented the different admission procedures of TEIs in choosing incoming education students. In the course of the discussion, Dr. Paz Lucido suggested to look into different admission procedures among TEIs in the country.
Dr. Tagalog emphasized that the proposed admission policy be prescriptive in nature to achieve quality education. During the implementation, she reiterated that the policy is just a minimum requirement to allow TEIs enhance their admission procedures.
This policy is a joint memorandum order of DepEd and CHED. It is suggested that there should be key persons coming from CHED; consider also school heads and representative from Bureau of Education Assessment(BEA) to administer exit assessment. It was also stressed that it will utilize a multi – dimensional methods adapted from the study of Lumich, et.al of 2012. This would be an assessment of knowledge gained from high school and interview to check the communication skills and appropriateness of attitudes in teaching. This is a research based admission policy for incoming education students. According to Mr. Erickson Reyes from CHED there is already a contextualized framework following the PSG but it is not officially approved.
There are also suggested topics and activities for the workshop like input of practices for screening from TEIs, foundational talks, framework talk and observation of teachers for the incoming students.
Having this kind of policy will be of great help for the TEIs according to Erickson Reyes, EPS of OPSD – CHED. This was supported by a statement of Dr. Jenilyn Rose B. Corpuz, Schools Division Superintendent of Manila, who said that the field has been waiting for this kind of initiative. Others also suggested to revisit the education track of SHS program, have some common criteria coming from CHED in choosing the education students and revisit the magna carta and ethical standards of teachers.