A TERTIARY school in Cagayan de Oro that caters to maritime studies has opened its maritime high school.
With the emerging problems of the K to 12 program of the Department of Education (DepEd), especially in Grades 11 and 12 or the senior high, the opening of the maritime high school at Capitol University this June for the academic year is a relief into one of the challenges that confronts DepEd when Grades 11 and 12 will be implemented.
CU executive vice president Fe Juarez said this is one of the university’s preparations for the K to 12 program in 2016 to 2018 where the senior high level starts.
“We are looking into other projects to support DepEd in their program,” Juarez said Thursday.
“Second, we want to help the community, so that is why we came up with this together with our partners since there are potential students who cannot afford to go to college,” she added.
The Philippine Transmarine Carriers Inc. (PTC), Angkla Partylist, and DepEd signed a memorandum of agreement to extend help to technical-vocational (tech-voc) field of qualified maritime schools.
PTC senior vice president Ronaldo Enrile said this will ease the problems that DepEd is encountering today.
“We started Project Balanghay to help DepEd especially that the full implementation of K to 12 is nearing. And partnership between Angkla, DepEd and PTC will ensure immediate employment of the students who will graduate from the program,” Enrile said.
Forty students from different schools in Region 10 were selected to be part of the pilot testing.
Only three schools in the Philippines were selected by PTC for their pilot testing, namely, CU, Muntinlupa National High School and Montilla National High School.
Juarez assured that there is employment waiting for students who will graduate from the tech-voc program of CU.
“In a way, there is a sure employment for our students so it can really help our less fortunate community na,” she said.
Enrile said that they are looking into adding more students in the future but as of now, the 40 shall be the initial enrolees of the program.
“What we want is the assurance that they get fully employed. We do not want to produce graduates which at the end of the day will not get employed,” he said.
However, scholarships is one major problems the partners have been looking into at the moment, Juarez said.
She said the school’s concern is the scholarship of the 40 students which CU cannot yet shoulder by itself at present.
“Our only problem here is the scholarship because they cannot commit as of now financial assistance because education costs and quality education is expensive. We are still looking into that. So we are seeking help from the city government,” she said.
Dionnie Gersana, the city’s Human Resource officer, said the city government is looking into helping the program to progress more.
“Personally, I am so happy that PTC chose CU as one of its schools. Even with the many criticisms of the K to 12, this is actually one good thing. It is a positive development, indeed. Rest assured, the city will help the program since that is really one of its priorities,” Gersana said.