SENATE Majority Leader Joel Villanueva lamented the low turn-out of learners taking enterprise-based education and training or EBET.

Villanueva, tackling Senate Bill 363 and House Bill 7400, noted that when the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority formulated the National Technical Education and Skills Development Plan 2018-2022, the agency set ambitious targets to increase the percentage of learners taking enterprise-based training from 4 percent in 2016 to 40 percent by 2022.

“However, by the end of 2022, we are still far from such targets, with enrollees and graduates reaching only 209,975 or 16.66 percent of all tech-voc learners and 190,979 or 15.51 percent respectively,” the majority leader said.

He said even EBET providers are in a downturn, from 983 EBET providers in 2019 to 830 in 2022 to 684 by the end of August of this year.

“This is really unfortunate, considering that EBET has proven to be a reliable bridge connecting our trainees to employment,” Villanueva said.

The senator also stressed that the hearing hopes to find a solution to the dismal outputs of the program.