Ph.

DTE 805: Theories, Problems, and Issues in Technology Education 1

Topic : The Implementation of DTS Act By Presillas Jr.
Professor : Dr. Alfonso G. Pacquing
Student : Antonio P. Antonio, Summer 2006

HISTORICAL AND CONTEXTUAL BACKGROUND OF

THE DUAL TRAINING SYSTEM IN THE PHILIPPINES

Factors of skilled manpower shortage in 1982: 1. the expansion of employment

opportunities in the Middle East, 2. the slowing down of the economic growth of the
country after more than a decade of martial law rule, 3. the growing gap between the rich
and the poor.

This mentality had two dangerous consequence: 1.low end and unskilled workers joining
the manpower exodus, and teaching professionals (including teachers in vocational
school) were leaving.

Civic-minded businessmen establish a vocational school that would address the social-
economic problem of poverty, while at the same time developing a new training system
that can turn out skilled workers at the soonest possible time. This project aimed
addressing two problems: widespread poverty and lack of skilled manpower.

The lack of skilled manpower during the period was due to many factors: 1. increasing
export of skilled manpower, 2. increasing drop-out rates from schools, 3. increasing
unemployment rate due to poor economic conditions in the country, and 4. worsening
educational system.

These problems faced by the Southeast Asian Science Foundation (SEASFI) of Manila
and Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF) of Germany hoped to address these problems by
establishing the Dualtech Training Center in 1985. Through the dual training system, they
addressed the problem of turning out skilled workers using limited facilities and expertise
by involving the end-users and industries in the training process. The vocational school
they established would provide its students with skills they need to get employed, the
values they need to be world-class workers, in the process, provide them with a future
they never imagined.

Dr. Ponciano Intal, President, Philippine Institute for Developmental Studies (PIDS)
recommended the following plan of action to address poverty alleviation concerns.

To produced higher employment-oriented, and decentralized growth:

1. Raise the investment rate in the Philippines.
2. Accelerate agricultural development and improve food production efficiency.
3. Encourage decentralized, employment-intensive industry and services
development.
4. Improve wage policy and industrial relations environment.
5. Improve macroeconomic policy environment through fiscal and monetary
management.
To provide focused, targeted, decentralized government services:

Page 1 of 11
Ph.DTE 805: Theories, Problems, and Issues in Technology Education 2
Topic : The Implementation of DTS Act By Presillas Jr.
Professor : Dr. Alfonso G. Pacquing
Student : Antonio P. Antonio, Summer 2006

1. Effect a major redirection of the country’s development strategy and economic

orientation.
2. Improve government service delivery mechanisms and intra-sector allocation and
prioritization of public expenditures.
3. Provide direct government assistance in food and services to the subsistence poor;
credit assistance to households; eliminate serious malnutrition; minimized drop-
out rates at the basic education level; expand public health services.

To develop other policy initiatives to help alleviate poverty:

1. Effect greater equity bias and decentralizing public investment programming.
2. Institute a more progressive income taxation system.
3. improve the tenure system especially of upland farmers.

Apprenticeship was used by Don Bosco Technical Institute in Canlubang in

Partneship with Nestle Philippines. In 1970 the National Manpower Youth Council
nationalized the apprenticeship training system but the labor union oppose the system due
abuse of businessman who only took apprentices rather than regular employee thus it
gave birth to E.O No. 111 in 1987 limiting the period to six month immersion in the
industry.

The controversial Dualtech Training Center in Mantrade Makati establish in 1985 and
was pattern after the German system did not receive so much appreciation from the
industry. Dualtech started working with government school, the Pablo Borbon Memorial
Institute of Technology in Batangas City; Punlaan School in San Juan, Metro Manila; and
Rizal Technological and Polytechnic Institute in Morong, Rizal adopted the same system.

Developing the Filipino Model of the Dual Training System

Changes were made to adapt to local conditions (political, legal, social, and cultural).
In what way is Dualtech different? The Dualtech model puts control of the system in
three hands: School, Industry, and the Government but with the school as the dominant
partner which brings the other two together.

Dualtech Emphasis evolved upon seeing that industry (as would be expected in a
newly-industrializing economy) tended to abuse apprentices while the Government and
the labor unions, caught in the middle, prefer political and legalistic solutions that stifles
the system’s development objective (E.O. 111). Dualtech early experiences was proven
that DTS, adapted to Philippine conditions, could work.

The New Legal Framework for Industry-based Training: The Dual Training System
Law of 1994

In August 1992, Cong. Belmonte of Quezon City Drafted a Dual Training System
Act. Dual Training System is a special type of vocational training that combines two

Page 2 of 11
Ph.DTE 805: Theories, Problems, and Issues in Technology Education 3
Topic : The Implementation of DTS Act By Presillas Jr.
Professor : Dr. Alfonso G. Pacquing
Student : Antonio P. Antonio, Summer 2006

places of learning: school and factory. The different versions of the law were reconciled
and coursed through a normal process was approved and signed into law on February 25,
1994 known as Dual Training System Act of 1994 as RA 7686. The law encourages
school and establishments, to utilize the Dual System of Technical-Vocational Education
and Training by providing incentives and clearer guidelines in implementation.

Advantages of DTS

1. learning the trade-related theory and basic skills in the school and applying it in
the factory.
2. The school doesn’t need too much sophisticated equipment, since a big part of the
skills learning takes place in the factory.
3. The dual system trainee gets an allowance during the training.
4. The school is more responsive to industries needs, since the in-school and in-plant
training are synchronized.
5. The school can train more students than its normal capacity.
6. Employability of the dual system graduate.

Is the Dual System the same as the Apprenticeship program? NO. In the dual system,
the trainee is a student sent to factories for in-plant training. In the apprenticeship system,
the trainee is an apprentice employed by the company and who is given related
theoretical instruction, which need not be in school.

Highlights of RA 7686:
1. It recognizes the effectiveness of the Dual Training System in alleviating poverty
by making vocational training more accessible to the poor.
2. The law recognizes the effectiveness of the DTS in training highly skilled
technician workers according to the specific needs of the industry.
3. It acknowledge the Dual System, by combining the development of skills, the
growth of technical and general knowledge, and the formation of values of
trainees.

Three major issues in DTS implementation.

1. The possibilities that the dual training system will be abused like the
apprenticeship system (which became a cheap labor scheme).
2. The expense to be incurred in developing the standards of vocational schools and
the training capabilities of establishments where the trainees will be trained.
3. The graduates might go abroad after the training or will be to specialize in terms
of skills that they will be “condemned” to one job during lifetime.

Presillas Jr. focus his study in five specific groups. They are the following:
1. Faculty members of schools implementing the dual system.
2. Officials of industrial establishments with dual training system trainees.

Page 3 of 11
Ph.DTE 805: Theories, Problems, and Issues in Technology Education 4
Topic : The Implementation of DTS Act By Presillas Jr.
Professor : Dr. Alfonso G. Pacquing
Student : Antonio P. Antonio, Summer 2006

3. Officials of technical-vocational (tech-voc) schools implementing the dual

system.
4. Student-trainee of the system.
5. TESDA, specifically NCR and Region IV branches/offices, as the government
authority tasked with overseeing the dual training system.

The objectives of the study are:

1. To determine the problems of dual training system implementation and the
solution to those problems.
2. To consolidate the problems perceived and the solutions proposed by the key
groups responsible for dual training system implementation.
3. To recommend a set of consolidated problems and solutions to the competent
authority (TESDA) in the form of policy inputs as a guide in its work to
accelerate the implementation of the dual training system.

The five problems areas addressed by each group are as follows:

1. Selection and retention of trainees.
2. Industry cooperation.
3. Adequacy of training resources.
4. Viability in financing the operation.
5. Prevention and correction of deviations.

Respondent were Dual Training Center in Manila-Pasay, MM; Canlubang, Carmelray

Industrial Park, Canlubang, Laguna; Pablo Borbon Memorial Institute of Technology in
Batangas City, Batangas; and establishment in town and cities of NCR, Laguna and
Batangas.

The first set of materials was on the linkage between economic development and
education specifically vocational and technical education and training in-out of the
Philippines, second the science of evaluation specifically on the use of comparative
studies and educational evaluation systems; and the DTS itself the German and Philippine
model as embodied in RA 7686.

Conferences of Educators in various meetings with people from industry,

representative from local and foreign development agencies and officials of the executive
branch of government summarizes the following points:
1. Why is this piece of legislation needed? What issues/problems will it
address/solve?
2. What lessons can we learn from the other countries in addressing/solving these
issues/problems?
3. Is legislating the adaptation and the implementation of the dual training system
the right solution to the problem?

Page 4 of 11
Ph.DTE 805: Theories, Problems, and Issues in Technology Education 5
Topic : The Implementation of DTS Act By Presillas Jr.
Professor : Dr. Alfonso G. Pacquing
Student : Antonio P. Antonio, Summer 2006

4. Does the dual system fit the needs, requirements, and culture of our country?
What changes are needed to make the dual system fit our social, economic, and
political environment?
5. What lessons can we learn from other countries that have tried to implement the
dual system?
6. What lessons can we learn from the implementation of the dual system in the
Philippines?

Discussions of the Role of Education in Economic Development.

The DTS law’s main objectives is to help the “country economic development
through an innovative delivery strategy of technical-vocational education and training”.
Many academic researchers lacked the conviction in the strong link between education
and economic development.

William McDonough, President of Federal Reserve Bank of New York, lamented that,
“ It is important to bear in mind that economic development is not the same as economic
growth; development involves more than just increases in total income. In the long run,
economic development can be sustained only if all parts of society-rich and poor, skilled
and less skilled, and among all ethnic and racial groups share the growing economic pie.
Unless all segments of society have a stake in economic growth, we cannot foster the
social and political cohesion that sustains economic growth”.

Through the years, many academics and human resources development experts have
established that there is indeed a link between education and economic development. The
following are reactions from the different experts:

Prof. Gary Becker: He clearly established the connection between the role of education in
human capital formation and linked it with economic development.

Prof. F.H. Harbison and C.A. Mayers: Accorded great importance to the role of education
in development and argued for the provision of a greater stock of skilled manpower to
meet “economic needs”.

Dr. Psacharopoulos, World Bank: The linkage between the economic benefits of
vocational schooling and the presence of employment opportunities in the country. Where
these employment opportunities are absent, vocational schooling has very low, negative
benefit-cost ratios; and where these opportunities exist, the corresponding benefits are
high.

Prof. Philip Foster, World Bank: If education plays an important role in economic
development, and the government has limited resources, which should the government
focus on: general education or vocational education?

Page 5 of 11
Ph.DTE 805: Theories, Problems, and Issues in Technology Education 6
Topic : The Implementation of DTS Act By Presillas Jr.
Professor : Dr. Alfonso G. Pacquing
Student : Antonio P. Antonio, Summer 2006

The economic development direction of less developed countries by wielding the

power of the world’s financial arm. These groups also maintained the following key
tenets:
1. It is the role of the developed nations to help the developing nations by sharing
their experiences and wealth.
2. A nation will develop economically if a strong democratic government governs it.
3. Democracy will work if the people are educated.

In practice, the human resources school tended to emphasize the expansion of

higher and secondary education over the primary schooling and the desirability of
providing more vocational and technical training in the schools to enhance directly
the stock of appropriately trained individuals.

Issue in the approach of manpower training according to Prof. Foster:

1. The pattern of actual job opportunities in the modern sectors of less developed
economies revealed that the academically-educated enjoyed greater opportunities
for employment and enhanced income that the products of vocational programs.
When educators speak of vocational training they think in terms of curriculum
with an industrial, agricultural, or possibly commercial content, but for the
economist, a vocational curriculum is defined with respect to outcomes, Whether
measured with respect to increased income or possibly enhanced opportunities for
social mobility.
2. Manpower plans based upon simplistic sets of extrapolations assumed market
trends could not become the basis for educational development.
3. The human resources school had argued for the enhancement of the supply of
trained, educated manpower in line with planned targets. This was leading to
unemployment in terms of access to jobs. Simply increasing the supply of
educated people would not, in itself, lead to economic growth without correlative
changes occurring in local economies.

Centralized planning models and the whole apparatus of manpower planning should
be replaced by economic strategies designed to enhance the efficiency of local labor
markets emerge as a new policy. This paradigm shift in viewing education/development
issue provided a neo-classical economic perspective running directly counter to those of
the development economics and human resources schools.

Foster listed down the following tasks for the government:

1. to ascertain where government activity in the field of education can make a
contribution and when it cannot;
2. to identify potential situations in which other agencies can with adequate
inducements take over a large number of educational functions;

Page 6 of 11
Ph.DTE 805: Theories, Problems, and Issues in Technology Education 7
Topic : The Implementation of DTS Act By Presillas Jr.
Professor : Dr. Alfonso G. Pacquing
Student : Antonio P. Antonio, Summer 2006

3. to indicate what are the comparative advantages and limitations of various

types of educational programs in the schools and outside of them in economic
growth.
The policy makers should consider the option of strengthening the linkage or close
coordination between the educational sector and the business-industry sector.. by giving
the latter an active role in the selection, education, training, and financing of .. students
whose specific skills are of utmost relevance to prospective employers. Preferably, tax
incentives can be extended to private firms meeting its scholarship, training, and hiring
quotas.

Uniqueness of Germany’s Dual Training System.

The country’s federal system reflects Germany’s history: separate kingdoms that
have agreed to band together under a common government, but maintaining the
autonomy that each culture demands. For this reason, the different states (called Lander)
fully control their own educational systems. For this reason, although education is
compulsory up to certain age, in some Lander it can take 9 years only, while in some it
can it can last for 13 years (Schoenfeldt, 1986, 15). Each state sees its educational system
as an important means to maintain its cultural identity, while at the same time preserve
the unity of the German nation as a whole. Its efforts to do so results in seemingly
complicated, but integrally cultural, manner of implementing the dual system. To reflect
this situation, Munch points out that the Vocational Training Act is a federal and is
classified constitutionally not as educational legislation (this being the responsibility of
the individual states) but rather as labor and/or economic legislation. This is the only
way of achieving federal control and unified nationwide regulations governing
apprentice-training firms. It is unimportant in this respect that the question of
responsibility is a matter of dispute among constitutional lawyers. (Munc 1983,24).

The German dual system benefited many sectors, but no one is willing to shell out
more funding. In response to the desire of many countries to import the dual system,
Timmerman, University of Bielifeld, offers the following caveats:
1. The dual system has a long tradition in Germany, starting with the master
apprenticeship in the middle ages;
2. The system needed about 100 years to develop its basic structure;
3. The dual system is embedded into and has developed in an economy and society,
which is characterized by unique features of the economic, social, and political
order in Germany.

Timmerman enumerated the strengths of the dual system:

1. Training firms acknowledge that vocational training is a strategic investment in
human resources.
2. Technological capacity/effectiveness: training is up-to-date and according to
industry.
3. Organizational capacity/effectiveness: the solid training in the basic skills makes
workers flexible and adaptable to changing conditions.

Page 7 of 11
Ph.DTE 805: Theories, Problems, and Issues in Technology Education 8
Topic : The Implementation of DTS Act By Presillas Jr.
Professor : Dr. Alfonso G. Pacquing
Student : Antonio P. Antonio, Summer 2006

4. Qualification capacity/effectiveness: Society and the economy are assured of a

steady supply of highly qualified workers.
5. Educational policy capacity/effectiveness: A great majority of the youth is given
the opportunity to be trained, employed, and to lead a bright future.
6. Social policy capacity/effectiveness: Youth unemployment is kept low and the
training demand of large age cohorts are met.
7. Labor market policy capacity/effectiveness: Guarantees the smooth transition into
work life due to the combined exposure of apprentices through learning by doing
in plants, offices, or workshops and job-related theoretical instruction in
vocational schools.
8. Pedagogical capacity/effectiveness: The youth learn the virtues and values to be a
good workers due to their exposure to real, not just simulated, work life. They
acquire a sense of responsibility, learn to take initiatives, and are introduced to
operational processes and the acquisition of social expertise.
9. Socialization capacity/effectiveness: The acquisition of the right values and values
help the youth in making themselves good members of society.
10. Stabilization capacity: The youth learn to play their part within the social
partnership that exists in a functioning social market economy.

Weaknesses of the Dual System:

1. Since the training decisions are left to the company, which decides for economic
reasons, there can be a supply and demand gap that will be unfilled.
2. Recruitment decisions for apprentices may lead to discrimination of specific
social groups in the training and in the labor market (e.g. handicapped, girls,
foreigners, and those without school leaving certificates).
3. There are inequalities of training opportunities arising from three factors .
4. A considerable number of firms do not meet the minimum standards (using
apprentices as cheap labor), implying that there continues to be legally deficit.
5. Training can be too specialized.
6. Quality differences in training among different economic sectors.
7. Continued existence of the gender-specific segmentation of professions.
8. Mismatch between training wants and training places.
9. Distorted incentives for companies to train result in fluctuations of manpower
supply and demand.
10. Training places supply and demand are affected by the business cycle.
11. Bias of competition between training and non-training companies (piracy of
trained apprentices favors non-training companies).
12. Updating the curricula takes too much time (because of the consensus needed
before actions are taken).
13. Synchronization of in in school and in-plant training.
14. Threat of political blackmail against vocational policy intentions (industries can
threaten not to train in order to pressure the government to act on industry-related
issues).

Page 8 of 11
Ph.DTE 805: Theories, Problems, and Issues in Technology Education 9
Topic : The Implementation of DTS Act By Presillas Jr.
Professor : Dr. Alfonso G. Pacquing
Student : Antonio P. Antonio, Summer 2006

15. The dual system can be less attractive to students since a certificate does not
guarantee entry to higher education.

The Science of Educational Evaluation and the Alternative VET System Options
Available.

Over the last three decades, there have been countless studies on the issue of
evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of vocational education and training. At the
micro level, they assist individual schools, and the institution that fund them, whether
local governments or private stockholders, in assessing the delivery of their basic service-
education-to their constituents, the students. At macro level, they help national
governments in policy-making in the face of tightening global economic competition,
growing populations of students, decreasing numbers of teachers, and ever tighter
government budgets.

Determining the variables that will make up the problem and solution indices for the
research on the dual training system will have to include a knowledge of evaluation
studies not only of the dual training system itself, but the educational, political,
economic, social systems of the country within which the training system is to be
implemented, and the use of cost benefit analysis as a way of measuring the economic
contribution of education, and the summarizes the results of cost-benefit studies.

The investment rule “to invest in those projects offering the highest rate of return”
appears simple enough, but when it is recognized that the calculation of the rate of return
depends upon critical assumptions about the extent to which earnings reflect productivity,
the extent to which earnings are influenced by tradition or by distribution of ability and
family characteristics in the population, the extent to which future demand and supply
relations will match those observed today, and so on, it may appear that cost-benefit
analysis has after all, little to offer the educational planner(Woodhall,1992)

Implication of more skilled and less skilled labor to vocational training.

1. Economically efficient production technologies sometimes imply more labor-

intensive technology, which, in turn will tend to raise the demand for skilled labor
and in turn, increase vocational training requirements.
2. In general, holding output constant, less skilled labor is apparently, a substitute for
skilled labor in the production process rather than a complement to it.

Proceedings of the Regional Seminar on Technical and Vocational Education and

Training

The seminar was designed to provide forum to consider problems in TVET

confronting developing countries. Problems of particular concern to countries in the
Asian and Pacific region were identified for discussion. These were related to the

Page 9 of 11
Ph.DTE 805: Theories, Problems, and Issues in Technology Education 10
Topic : The Implementation of DTS Act By Presillas Jr.
Professor : Dr. Alfonso G. Pacquing
Student : Antonio P. Antonio, Summer 2006

formulation of policies in the context of conflicting political, economic, and social

requirements; to the planning process in an area with diverse and divisive training modes;
to the development of management skills needed to organize and manage complex
systems; and to the mobilization, husbandry and efficient use of scarce resources. It was
intended to share experiences and efforts to develop each country’s TVET systems to
meet economic, social, and technological changes.

The following resource paper presented their observation paper:

Murugasu, Senior Education Specialist, ADB: What is necessary for the development of
TVET is not the creation of new systems but institution building, and a modification of
existing systems based on demographic, political, and social situations prevailing in each
country. There is no best mode of training; any system can be efficient, given the right
resources, support and conditions.

Rumsey, Director of Studies of the New South Wales Department of Technical and
Further Education, Sydney, Australia: There is no one approach to training and a mix of
training modes in needed in a country. Foreign training models have always proved
successful and it is, therefore, best to develop indigenous models. Developing countries
have much in common and solutions to their problems should be sought from among
themselves.

Dougherty, Senior Economics Lecturer, London School of Economics: Much skills

development takes place on-the-job and there is little need for pre-employment training.

Ziderman, Senior Economist, World Bank: The imposition of user charges and training
levies on enterprises offers alternative sources of funding while greater utilization of
private training markets would reduce public sector spending on training.

At the end of the seminar done in 1990 the following agreement was conceived:
1. The effectiveness and efficiency in the formal and non-formal training sectors
should be improved and basic education strengthened;
2. The enterprise-based training should be encouraged and developed and that the
private sector should assume a greater share of the burden of training.
3. That manpower forecasting and its adoption in planning has many limitations;
4. That the unique social, economic, institutional and political conditions in the
various countries should be taken into account in the planning of TVET;
5. That more attention should be given to the internal and external efficiencies of
training modes; and
6. That there is no one best training mode.

Characteristics of a Good Vocational Education and Training System:

1. It has to fit the local conditions: social, cultural, economic, and political. The
social infrastructure has to be present.

Page 10 of 11
Ph.DTE 805: Theories, Problems, and Issues in Technology Education 11
Topic : The Implementation of DTS Act By Presillas Jr.
Professor : Dr. Alfonso G. Pacquing
Student : Antonio P. Antonio, Summer 2006

2. Its graduates should be employable (i.e., skilled) and educated (i.e., trained to
learn and adapt). Skills can best be developed by coordinating on-the-job
exposure and theoretical instruction, both of which should be of good quality.
3. The system has to be market-oriented: it has to address the needs of the end-users
(employers) and the beneficiaries (parents and students).
4. It has to have a legal foundation that will encourage the stakeholders
(government, employers, parents, community, and the trainees) to participate and
lead to a fruitful and dynamic partnership.
5. Private sector led: the government focuses on improving the quality of basic
education, while the private sector focuses on VET.
6. The system has to economically viable: VET is expensive, but as cost benefit
studies have pointed out, it makes good economic sense.
7. There is a need to invest in good teachers, good equipment and social
infrastructure (especially school managers).

Page 11 of 11