Saturday, September 06, 2008 25 Nursing schools operate despite closure order
TWENTY-five “non-performing” nursing schools continue to operate despite a recommendation by a panel of experts for their immediate closure two years ago, the Commission on Higher Education (Ched) said.
Ched executive director Julito Vitriolo said that much as they want to shut down the nursing schools, their hands are tied with an injunction filed before the court by the same schools that they wanted to close.
"Unfortunately while we were aggressively doing this we faced court cases in the process and associations involving hundreds of schools t and they were able to get a permanent injunction so we were not able to do anything at this point," he said.
He said with the new Ched administration under chairman Emmanuel Angeles, they will find way to immediately finish the court cases and close erring nursing schools.
"I think with the coming of the new chairman, I think we will study this and impose quality on these particular programs so we expect some changes here. But we have to first grapple with the cases pending and then talk to the associations about this because we are really serious in this area. But as I said there are cases pending we have to also respect the action of the courts," he added.
Vitriolo said that until the court does not hand down its decision, they would not be able to act.
During his assumption to the Ched chief post last Monday, Angeles vowed to improve the quality of tertiary in the country by implementing reform measures and rooting out “fly-by-night” and “hole-in-the-wall” schools.
The higher education commission has started cracking down on erring nursing schools that lacked such basic facilities such as base hospitals, libraries, qualified dean and faculty and has raised the passing rate in the board exams to eight percent from the previous five percent before they were able to secure permits from Ched to operate.
Of the total number of nursing schools, Ched considers only 12 to be in the excellent standard with annual passing rate of 90 percent while 40 recorded a zero passing rate.
Former Ched Technical Group on Nursing chairperson Marlyn Lorenzo earlier criticized the agency for its inaction on her recommendation on the closure of erring nursing schools.
Lorenzo, now with the National Institute of Health, a research institute at the University of the Philippines in Manila, said Ched does not have the political will to implement her recommendation last 2006.
But according to Vitriolo, they are doing their best but they have to abide by the law.
"I think we have done in the past. We did our part that’s why we are faced with these legal court actions. But we just have to do it just like in other programs," he said.
Lorenzo earlier said that based on her observation, the quality of nursing graduates has declined as the passing rate slowly goes down – from 54 percent in 2004 to the present 48 percent.
Authorities said only 48 percent or 31,000 nurses passed the licensure exams last year out of the 64,909 takers.
Ched records showed that of the 441,186 tertiary graduates this school year, most came from medical and allied courses, including nursing. Medical and allied programs ranked fourth in previous records.
The records also showed that nursing students comprise nearly 632,208 of the 2.5 million enrollees in tertiary institutions are into medical and allied programs.
While the number of nursing schools has doubled to 470, many of these are not performing well. (AH/Sunnex)
