SENATOR Sherwin Gatchalian said the shortage of assessors remains a challenge for the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority despite the availability of funding for the assessment and certification of senior high school learners pursuing the technical-vocational-livelihood track.

For School Year 2020-2021, there were 473,911 senior high school graduates who took the TVL track, 32,965 of which took the national certification.

Of these, 31,993 or 97.1% passed, but the overall certification rate for that school year was only equivalent to 6.8%.

“Even if we have the money for the assessment, we don’t have the assessors. Kaya masasayang lang ‘yung pondo. Going by the math, if we have more than 470,000 senior high school learners in tech-voc and we’re going by the 10 is to 1 ratio, we will need 47,000 assessors, and yet you’re planning to add only 11,000,” Gatchalian told TESDA officials.

He added that the Senate is moving to allocate around P1.5 billion for the assessment and certification of more than 470,000 senior high school learners.

The Department of Education earlier said that the cost of undergoing assessment is a bottleneck for learners who took the TVL track.

Data from the TESDA Certification Office revealed that there are only 7,551 accredited competency assessors nationwide.

“We have to start the process of getting assessors for the 470,000 senior high school learners. We already generated the funds. It’s up to TESDA now to look for assessors,” Gatchalian said.

TESDA Director General Suharto Mangudadatu proposed training DepEd district supervisors as assessors but the senator said supervisors are already burdened with their own workload.