Six in 10 students in Philippines unfit for university

As a professor in a big university in Cebu, I can attest to the fact that majority of the students are not yet fit for college. This is seen in the results of basic Math exams, Trigonometry and Algebra, which I give at the start of every semester. Most of the students do not know how to operate with grouping symbols and they fail in the basic polynomial factoring. It isn't a surprise for me to read this report that more than half of the 1.3 million students in public and private high schools in the Philippines are unfit for college.
Department of Education said the results of the National Career Assessment Examination showed that just 49,066 or 3.76 percent have "high aptitude" for university education while 478,909 or 36.69 percent had "moderate aptitude."The rest had "low aptitude" and were rated as likely to fail university. Nelia Benito, head of the department's National Education Testing and Research Center, said the test sought to assess the students in general scholastics, entrepreneurial skills and non-verbal ability.Education Secretary Jesli Lapus said the results showed a majority of high school students are not fit for college and should take the technical and vocational track.He criticised young people for instead wanting to become "dancers and actors.""The tests supports our theory that a lot of our students are better suited to take the technical-vocational track. And it supports the shift in our policy directions for education," Lapus said.He said there were more than half a million blue collar jobs not being filled due to a shortage of skilled workers in the country while millions remain unemployed."We have to address what we call as the 'job mismatch'. Out of the 2.6 million unemployed Filipinos, around 1.1 million are college graduates."But at the same time, we have 650,000 technical jobs available in the local market, and we cannot fill in the vacancies because our applicants lack the required skills," Lapus said.To improve the aptitude of these students is to address the shortage of books in public schools and improve school facilities. More importantly, there is a need for our schools to have competent teachers. Don't you know that some math teachers don't even know how to factor polynomials? source: www.philstar.com