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Expanding enterprise-based training: Senate Majority Leader Joel Villanueva, during Monday’s public hearing of the Committee on Higher, Technical and Vocational Education, December 4, 2023, laments the low turn-out of learners taking enterprise-based education and training (EBET). Villanueva, tackling Senate Bill No. (SBN) 363 and House Bill No. (HBN) 7400, noted that when Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) formulated the National Technical Education and Skills Development Plan (NTESDP) 2018-2022, the agency set ambitious targets to increase the percentage of learners taking enterprise-based training from 4 percent in 2016 to 40 percent by 2022. “However, by the end of 2022, we are still far from such targets, with enrollees and graduates reaching only 209,975 (16.66 percent of all tech-voc learners) and 190,979 (or 15.51 percent) respectively,” the majority leader said. He said even EBET providers are in downturn, from 983 EBET providers in 2019 to 830 in 2022 to 684 by the end of August of this year. “This is really unfortunate, considering that EBET has proven to be a reliable bridge connecting our trainees to employment,” Villanueva said, stressing that the hearing hopes to find solution to this dismal outputs of the program. (Bibo Nueva España/Senate PRIB)