Terms of Reference

National Consultant – Gender and Social Inclusion (GSI)

Skills for Prosperity – Southeast Asia/ Philippines

Background

The Skills for Prosperity –Southeast Asia Project falls under the Cross-Government Prosperity Fund’s Global Skills Programme where ODA is granted to support middle income countries to address skills shortages. The Global Skills Programme takes a partnership approach and draws on UK expertise to promote sustainable and inclusive growth by improving the affordability, quality, relevance and equity of Higher Education (HE) and Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in the partner countries.

The Skills for Prosperity –Southeast Asia Project is implemented by the ILO, led by the Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP) and the Decent Work Technical Support Team for East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific (DWT-Bangkok). The Project aims to increase national capacity to achieve sustained inclusive growth through the enhancement of skills development and technical and vocational education training (TVET) systems. These systems will offer relevant, quality and inclusive programmes that support both industry upgrading and transformation, and improvements in employability, employment and the livelihood opportunities of beneficiaries. The Project targets three middle-income countries in Southeast Asia: Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Across all countries, the Project will support national efforts to facilitate reform at the policy and system levels for broad national impact and sustainability. At the same time, it will ensure impact at the individual level by contributing to poverty reduction and address inequality. In short, the project combines interventions at the upstream level (e.g. policy and structure) and the downstream level (training delivery, certification and employment facilitation). The intended impact is the increased capacity for inclusive growth in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines due to more productive and equitable skills systems and TVET systems, improving employability, employment opportunities and the livelihoods for the beneficiaries.

The work under this terms of reference is for the Philippines.

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The Philippines has enjoyed an average annual growth of 6.3 percent between2010-2018, making it one of the fastest growing economies in Asia. The recent high growth is attributable to the demographic sweet spot and the sustained growth of remittances. However, the country’s quest for inclusive development is plagued by the sluggish job growth. In recent years, the rapid decline in the agriculture employment due to the modernization and the aging farmers offsets the growth in the manufacturing and service jobs. The country remains heavily dependent on the overseas employment to absorb the ever-increasing youth population in the labour market despite the repeated turbulence in different destination countries. The employment outlook is further complicated by the rapid upgradation of technologies from agriculture and manufacturing to the business process outsourcing/ management (BPO/BPM), making the technology and jobs as one of the hottest topics of the day. The country’s commitment to the Paris Agreement as well as its intention to mitigate and adapt to the impact of climate change also call for the transformation of massive jobs into green and decent ones (i.e., the Just Transition towards an environmentally sustainable economy – a concept included in the Paris Agreement). The jobs agenda is also the challenge of inclusion of the vulnerable and marginalized groups. It begins with the high unemployment among youth coupled with the high rate of school dropouts and NEETs. The relatively low labour force participation rate is further exacerbated in the poorer regions and among women. The other groups facing the challenge of economic inclusion are: people with disabilities (PwD), the indigenous people (IP) and the internally displaced people (IDP) due to disaster and/or conflict, and those who were retrenched or face the risk of job loss due to the advancement of technology and the greening of the economy including those in the IT-BPM sector and the informal economy.

All these challenges call for a reform of the TVET system of the Philippines despite the strength of the present system. Indeed, the Government has identified a number of areas where the current approach to skills development needs improvement under the National Technical Education and Skills Development Plan 2018-2022 (NTESDP) being implemented in conjunction with the rollout of the K-12 compulsory education, the Tulong-Trabaho Act providing free access to technical-vocation education, and the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act (UAQTEA) as follows:

i) the low employability of Philippine TVET graduates – with an employment rate of only 65%, it is clear that vocational training is not meeting the needs of employers

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ii) rapid technological advancements that are making many jobs obsolete – in 2016 the World Economic Forum estimated that by 2020 a third of core skills for new jobs would be those not then considered critical, and the current skills system has been slow to respond to changing economic requirements, including the operationalization of the concept of the 21st century skills and green skills;

iii) the acute lack of facilities and equipment, qualified trainers, and assessors in the sector combined with the supply-driven nature of the TVET sector – despite recent significant increases in the budget for the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and including vocational training as a no-cost option in secondary and tertiary education, actual facilities and quality are limited

iv) the loss of skills due to massive outmigration of Filipino workers - which also impacts the willingness of non-government actors to invest in skills training; and

v) limited resources to adequately serve the overall demand as well as the marginalized and disadvantaged poor.

In the Philippines, the Project will focus on areas in the NTESDP where the government has identified priorities but lacks capacity to fully operationalize the agenda. This will ensure the strong buy-in and ownership by the national government, particularly given that the reform thrust of the NTESDP is in line with the objectives of this proposed project. By the same token, the outcome of the project will be sustainable since they are the operationalized outcomes of the NTESDP and other key agenda of the Government. The project will leverage technical support and expertise from the ILO and other sources of expertise including the Global Britain Education and Skills Hub (GB Hub) in collaboration with key local stakeholders. Industry engagement and equity concerns are mainstreamed into all activities, with an additional geographic target to poor regions (to be determined during the Inception Phase through stakeholder consultations).xxii The project will address the weak linkage of the institutional capacity at sub-national level.

The strategy will include the following elements:

• Improved levels of learning outcomes from TVET and secondary to tertiary education through increased number and quality of trainers and assessors and better linkages with industry both at the national and the subnational levels

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focusing on selected poor regions connected to growth hubs (e.g., Clark in Luzon, Cebu in Visayas)

• Improved relevance of TVET and secondary to tertiary education to the skills sets needed by industry through, among other things, revitalization of the Industry Board/Sector Skills Council mechanism and the apprenticeship programme.

• Improved financing mechanisms and affordability of TVET through the development and testing of viable models of public-private financing.

• Enabling policy, planning and legal environment strengthened for financing, equity and industry TVET/secondary to tertiary education linkages, responding to the objectives of the NTESDP for improved responsiveness, collaboration and planning.

• Gender equity and access for marginalized and vulnerable groups will be addressed in two ways: as a mainstreamed concern in all actions which will be operationalized in selected poor regions connected to growth hubs; and as a special subcomponent working to develop an effective TVET system in a pilot region to be selected with stakeholders during the inception phase.

• Advocacy on future skill needs and career shifts will be organised with a targeted group of young people who seek new jobs or look for alternative jobs. They are advocated on future skill demands. Opportunity to reach out to young workers to raise their awareness of their rights at work, future skills demands and career development and link them to national TVET programmes and service providers.

It is important to note that the proposed project will respond to the keen interests of the Government to overcome the constraints and limitations of the Industry Board (IB) system boosted several times in more than three decades and learn from the latest experiences of successful and failed cases of SSCs in order to make the future IB/SSC system truly responsive to the industry demand and sustainable.

The Project will work on three or more selected sectors from the seven key employment generating sectors and support the strategic responses of the NTESDP. Temporarily, four sectors have been suggested as the target sectors of the Project: IT-BPM, construction, tourism and agri-fisheries. The eventual selection of the target sectors will be subject to further consultation with key stakeholders including the

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leading industry associations of each. ILO’s experiences of working with these sectors under the past and on-going projects in the Philippines will be fully leveraged to address the specific constraints of the respective sectors/subsectors.

The Philippines has been among the top 10 most gender equal countries in the world according to the Global Gender Gap report of the World Economic Forum since the report was launched in 2006. On top of this, the Philippines has made substantial progress in key gender equality indicators over the past few decades. In education, women’s literacy rates and enrolment in education (from primary to tertiary levels) is at parity with those of men, and health outcomes are also strong. However, there are still significant shortcomings in political empowerment (with a low level of women in parliament and in ministerial positions, compared to men), and relatively low labour force participation and wage equality. Despite the increase in women’s education rates and completion, they continue to participate in the areas that women are traditionally occupied, reflecting continued systemic segregation in education. At the tertiary level, a pattern of gender stereotyping in the chosen area of study persists.

The proposed PF Skills programme for South East Asia is compliant with the UK Gender Act and is in line with the Prosperity Fund GSI Framework (Annex 1), with a clear objective to improve GSI as stated in the global Theory of Change, and elaborated on the draft logical framework. During the inception phase the programme for the Philippines will go further and develop GSI interventions to promote gender and social inclusion in the country, through the programme’s HE/TVET enhancement activities, outputs and outcomes.

Scope of Work and Expected Outputs

The inception phase will build on findings and recommendations from the PF Global Skills review of GSI (Landell-Mills consultants, 2018), ILO research and advocacy work on women, skills and employment. For example ILO’s policy brief – The Gender Divide in Skills Development: Progress, Challenges and Policy Options for Empowering Women (2014); ILO’s Resource Guide on Gender Mainstreaming in TVET, developed during an ILO programme implementation in Bangladesh (2012/13). And more recently outputs from the ILO’s Gender, Equality and Diversity & ILOAIDS Branch, such as: Game Changers: Women and the future of work in Asia and the Pacific (2018); and A Quantum Leap for Gender Equality: For a better future of work for all (2019).

The activities will be defined in the inception stage through in-depth GSI analysis, covering for example:

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• Gender and inclusion gaps and barriers as part of a capacity gap analysis of the TVET system

• Institutionalization of gender and social inclusion baselines, targeting and monitoring

• Formulation and adaptation of gender and vulnerable groups inclusion strategy in TVET, reflecting lessons learned from past & on-going program (e.g., Incorporation of a business project during the skills curricula and training; Identification of employment opportunities and career progression routes, especially in traditionally male-dominated occupations, to encourage TVET participation by disadvantaged groups

• Special linkage to the demands in the growth poles across the country

• Paying special attention to the viable careers for the school dropouts/out-of-school youth, the unemployed youth and the NEET in the poor regions

• Working with local employers organizations and private sector champions to overcome the discrimination in employment

The above actions, and more, will ensure GSI activities are cross cutting in nature to enhance Project activities and outputs to maximise opportunities for promoting women’s economic empowerment and social inclusion (especially for unemployed youth), and in the long term beyond the Project’s life time to contribute to the transformation of women’s opportunities and economic status. The result will inform the design of evidence-based good practice interventions that will meet the project’s overall goal of reducing poverty and benefitting marginalized groups through more inclusive growth, in the TVET and skills sector.

Under the technical supervision of the Enterprise Development Specialist and the Senior Programme Officer of ILO Manila, and the Skills and Employability Specialist of DWT-Bangkok, with additional technical inputs from the Skills Unit of the ILO Headquarters in Geneva, other concerned specialists of DWT-Bangkok and relevant consultants, and the overall guidance of the Country Director of ILO Manila, the consultant’s scope of work will include:

a) Ensuring that the Philippine context is factored when developing recommendations in mainstreaming GSI into the project’s performance and monitoring framework. At the moment, the focus on gender and social inclusion

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is not specific, therefore, a comprehensive baseline study alongside a scoping report is required to map the current landscape of gender and social inclusion within the TVET and skills sector.

b) Conduct a baseline study of gender and social inclusion in the skills and TVET sector, collecting data disaggregated by age, sex and disability (and other characteristics relevant to the national context) and providing further situational analysis as necessary. Draw on existing data sources. Data will be captured to enable impact assessment at the end. (Refer to Annex 2)

c) Ensuring that the project facilitates the better understanding of equity priority areas – including barriers to access, enrolment, attainment and transition to employment, and how gender and inclusion can be mainstreamed through the project and/or where there may be opportunities for specific targeted activities in order to address these barriers.

d) Where relevant to GSI, provide support and be involved in enhancing the monitoring and evaluation framework for results-based project management, including the theory of change, detailed M&E plan, performance framework (i.e. contribute to establishing baselines, targets, milestones and key performance indicators, risk management strategies, management information systems. Contribute to the development of the inception report and the drafting.

e) Produce a report, which makes clear, robust, evidenced recommendations for gender and social inclusion strategy in the skills and TVET sector, and other considerations for facilitating school-work transitions and career progression.

f) Document review and conduct interviews with key stakeholders, particularly for national and sub-national consultations.

g) Liaise with government departments/units, workers' and employers' organizations, UN organizations non-governmental organizations on a broad range of country programmes and projects.

h) Undertake missions and participate in meetings and conference calls.

The main deliverables of the consultancy will be:

1. Workplan

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2. Report with recommendations in mainstreaming GSI into the project’s monitoring and performance framework.

3. Updated logical framework and M&E framework with GSI duly mainstreamed in accordance with the UK and ILO requirements.

Duration and Payment

The proposed contract duration is March 1, 2020 to March 31, 2020. The total amount of the contract will be six thousand ($6,000) US dollars. Travel costs (air tickets, DSA and transport) can be paid on top of the contract value subject to prior approval by the ILO.

First payment will be made upon the signing of the contract and submission of item (1) as outlined in the section on Main Deliverables, to the satisfaction of the ILO.

Final payment will be made upon the submission of items (2) and (3) as outlined in the section on Main Deliverables, to the satisfaction of the ILO.

Qualifications and Experience

Interested researchers for this assignment are required to possess the following qualifications and experience.

• An advanced degree in economics, social science, or related field.

• At least five (5) years of experience in research in socio-economic, labour market, TVET issues, and gender analysis.

• Demonstrated understanding of the skills and TVET system and related issues pertaining to gender and social inclusion at the national and local levels.

• Ability to reach out to the public and private institutions.

• Demonstrated ability to write analytical reports in English on the relevant topics.

• Ability to liaise responsibly with senior officials and staff of the ILO and key partner organizations.

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Submission of expression of interests

The interested candidates must submit their expression of interests with i) resumes with a covering letter covering the information on the above qualifications and experience, and b) writing samples (preferably on the research or assessment of the relevant topics).

The expression of intersets must be submitted by 5:00pm (Manila time) of Thursday, 27th of February 2020 through emails to the following:

- Enterprise Development Specialist of CO-Manila at kagohashi@ilo.org, with copy to

- Senior Programme Officer of CO-Manila at sardana@ilo.org, and

- ILO Manila registry at manila@ilo.org

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for short interviews for the final selection.

Annex 1: UK GSI Framework – embedded

UK GSI

Framework.pptx

Annex 2: The Philippine TVET context, challenges and strategic implications

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Annex 2: The Philippine TVET context, challenges and strategic implications

Critical challenges facing the Philippines include rapid population growth, with a working age population that outstrips the capacity of the economy to create jobs. Unemployment, underemployment, poverty, economic and social inequality and exclusion are core concerns for the government, whose development plans emphasize inclusive growth to create a prosperous, healthy, high trust and predominantly middle-class society where no one is poor, and a smart, innovative and globally competitive knowledge economy. The Philippines Development Plan (PDP) 2017-2022 and AmBisyon Natin 2040 call for effective policies and measures to address unemployment and underemployment, strengthened protection and security of overseas workers and enhanced workers’ social protection and welfare.

The Philippines Comprehensive National Industrial Strategy (CNIS)i is aimed at upgrading industries; linking manufacturing, agriculture and services; addressing supply chain gaps; and deepening industry participation in global value chains. It sees the private sector as the major driver of growth, while the government acts as coordinator and facilitator in addressing the most binding obstacles to the entry and growth of domestic firms and SMEs and their linkage with multinational companies and creation of the right policy framework to encourage the development of the private sector. The strategy is summarized as “inclusive, innovation-led, industrial strategy or i3s”. The Industry Roadmaps are being developed for each of the key sectors on rolling basis, and the Export Development Plan has been updated every few years. The TVET system is increasingly seen as an integral part of these private sector development policies.

The Philippines TVET system has a number of strong features, including the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) which is the regulatory authority and a provider of technical education and skills development. The Philippines also has a unified National Qualifications Framework linking technical and academic education and qualifications and providing for skills recognition. About 60% of the country’s 4,500 TVET providers are private, with fee-paying students, while tuition is free at public institutions. TESDA delivers training directly at schools (1-3 years), TESDA regional centres (short non-formal training), through community-based programs to facilitate self-employment of marginalized/special populations, and through partnerships with enterprises (e.g., apprenticeship, internship and dual training). While the public vocational schools are free of fee, TESDA provides scholarship programmes for the training at private institutions.

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However, the Government has identified a number of areas where the current approach to skills development need improvement. The National Technical Education and Skills Development Plan 2018-2022 (NTESDP) notes these as follows: i) rapid technological advancements that are making many jobs obsolete; ii) the low employability of Philippine TVET graduates; iii) the acute lack of facilities and equipment, qualified trainers, and assessors in the sector combined with the supply-driven nature of the TVET sector; iv) the loss of skills due to massive outmigration of Filipino workers; v) and limited resources to adequately serve the marginalized and disadvantaged poor.

Key to address the NTESDP goal of Social Equity for Workforce Inclusion and Poverty Reduction is a focus on the lagging regions. As noted in the NTESDP, among the 17 regions of the Philippines, those with high poverty incidence rates were: ARMM (48.2%), Caraga (30.8%), VIII (30.7%), XII (30.5%), X (30.3%), V (27.5%), VI (23.6%) and IX (26%). These eight poorest regions comprised 60 percent of 2.25M of the total poo families in 2015 (3,746,315).

Responding to Industry 4.0 was probably the most popular topic of policy and business forums in the Philippines during the year 2018. Having the world-class IT-BPM sector and the semi-conductor industry as the long-time lead export sector, the country has been feeling the growing impact of the emerging technologies and the imminent need to reform the TVET sector to respond to the changing demand. The NTESDP states that, by 2020, more than a third off the desired core skill sets of most occupations will be comprised of skills that are not yet considered crucial to the job today, referring to the Future of Jobs Survey of the World Economic Forum in 2016. An ILO study found

BOX 1: The National Technical Education and Skills Development Plan 2018-2022 (NTESDP)

The primary objective of the NTESDP 2018-2022 is to galvanize and strengthen the TVET sector through a Two-Pronged Strategic Thrust: (1) Global Competitiveness and Workforce Readiness; and (2) Social Equity for Workforce Inclusion and Poverty Reduction.

In order to address the challenges identified, the NTESDP has set five objectives to: address these challenges:

1) create a conducive and enabling environment for the development and quality service delivery of the TVET sector;

2) prepare the Philippine workforce for the challenges posed by the Fourth Industrial Revolution; 3) assure industries with high economic and employment growth potentials and provide them the

required quantity of quality workforce; 4) directly and more vigorously address workforce needs of the basic sectors and the disadvantaged;

and 5) instill values and integrity in the conduct and delivery of TVET in the whole sector.

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that 89% of the BPO/call centre jobs in the Philippines are at high risk of automation.ii In reality, much of the simple telephone operator jobs have been replaced by the chat bots and expert operators while once popular medical transcription jobs has been largely replaced by the medical programmers. Digitization of the media is making many of the print media jobs obsolete. The expansion of the platform businesses and FinTech innovations are disrupting numerous brick and motor businesses and traditional financial intermediaries. Meanwhile, the Government was eagerly working on the National Determined Contribution, the country’s commitment to the Paris Agreement, and to prepare for the implementation of its Green Jobs Act.

The Government is struggling to operationalize the concept of the 21st century skills in order to meet up the challenge of the Industry 4.0. The concept of the 21st century skills has been highlighted both in the PDP and the NTESDP. However, its operationalization in the TVET system is slow and uncertain to date. Making TVET system compatible with the National Determined Contribution is also at the incipient stage, with the first training regulations of Green TVET developed in 2018 with support of ILO (what about Green Jobs HRD?). Two national studies on skills for green jobs were conducted in (first in 2011 and updated in 2017) with ILO support with identified skills needs for green jobs opportunities in key economic sectors (agriculture, industry, tourism)

A problem area is the low employability of Philippines TVET graduates, a mere 65 percent. TVET providers face the perennial criticism that they are providing and producing low level skills and technical education. This reality spills over to the labour economy which is characterized by the prevalence of low-value work compared to mid- to high-value jobs in a ratio of 70:30.iii

The rollout of the K-12 compulsory education and the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act (UAQTEA)iv is changing the horizon of the TVET system. This includes, among others, the instilling of the foundation skills for the 21st century jobs across the basic to higher education and TVET system, and the balance between the basic-to-higher education and TVET tracks.v On the other hand, TESDA’s 2019 budget has been more than doubled to provide a new scholarship programme under the UAQTE to make all TVET programmes free in all state-run technical-vocational institutions (STVIs). The TESDA National Certificate (NC) Level II is now granted to the senior high graduates,vi but not always appreciated by the industry as useful skills. TESDA admits that K-12 graduates are “not job-ready” and NTESDP calls for measures to tackle the challenge. The TVET elements in high school education make the voucher systemvii of the Department of Education (DepEd) an important instrument

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in the expanded TVET system on top of the TESDA scholarship. The full implementation of tech-voc courses in the K-12 education system has aggravated the lack of facilities and equipment, qualified trainers, and assessors in the sector.

Education for the disadvantaged groups appear the weakest point of K-12. The Alternative Learning System (ALS) for those who do not have or cannot access formal education in school receive less than 1% of the basic education budget. There were only 22,129 learners with disability/special education needs for SY 2017-2018 while over 1.4 million persons had disability in 2010.viii

The picture is further complicated by the high rates of out-of-school children (OOSC) and school dropouts with a high gender disparity. The OOSC rate are 4.55% for primary-2016, 7.32% for lower secondary-2016, and 20.23% for upper secondary-2015.ix The school dropout rates are 12.5% primary and 11.5% lower secondary in 2015.x Gender gap is pronounced in both cases: Two-thirds (65.0%) of OOSC aged 5-15 years in 2017 were boys;xi and male dropouts are significantly higher than female (15.2% male dropout at the primary level as compared to 9.4% female, and 14.5% male dropout at lower secondary level while 8.3% female do).xii This is problematic when considering participation in the labour force. Men participating at much higher percentages and a significant proportion was employed in unskilled labour while women participated in paid labour at much lower rates but were more likely to occupy higher salaried positions in the formal sector.xiii 87% of 3.8 million out-of-school children/youth are 16 to 24 years old.xiv TVET must constitute the core part of assistants to these out-of-school youth (OOSY).

However, current number of TESDA scholarship grantees (300,000-350,000 per year) is inadequate to cover the 3.3 million OOSY.xv TESDA also sees it too small when compared to the approximately 2 million annual enrolments in the TVET system (15-18% of it receives TESDA scholarship) and the approximately 43 million labour force (less than 1%). The Authority recognizes the importance of exploring the “alternative financing” for TVET to supplement the insufficient budget. Aware of the emerging good practices including those in the neighbouring countries, the TVET authority aims to make alternative financing a priority legislative bill. However, no details have been worked out, yet.

The Filipino workers’ out-migration is creating a brain and brawn drain, affecting the pool of qualified and skilled workers. The overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) amounts to 2.1-2.3 million.xvi With 600,000 or more of them being estimated to be new hires,xvii its annual job absorption capacity is far larger than any key employment generating sectors of the domestic economy. However, some industries are known to lose

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massive workers to the overseas jobs such as construction,xviii hotel and hospitality, and nursing. The President Duterte has recently directed TESDA to train more workers in carpentry, welding and other skills needed for the infrastructure drive, ‘Build Build Build.’xix The Government has been aiming at upgrading OFWs from predominantly of elementary occupations (62% of the land-based deployment in 2016) to higher skilled and professionals in recent years, too.

In response to the long-standing criticism on the supply-driven nature, the TVET system of the Philippines underwent several rounds of attempts to strengthen the private sector engagement with limited success. The Industry Boards (IBs) have been the main instrument for private sector engagement in the TVET planning and delivery for the last four decades. These attempts include the World Bank project during 1980s with a declining subsidy scheme, the ILO review and recommendations in 1996,xx and the Australian-supported project to expand the roles of IBs into the skills needs assessment. As of today, only the Tourism IB remains active. The recent TESDA Circular No. Circular No. 085 2018xxi indicates the renewed interests of the Government to make the TVET system more responsive to the industry demand as a way to respond to the criticism on the supply-driven nature of the present TVET system.

Strategic Implications

The Philippine component of the Project ensures its alignment with the reform thrust of the Government. The commitment of the Government to the TVET reform is espoused in the NTESDP as seen in the section of problem analysis above. It was further discussed at the national consultation meeting with the British Embassy in October 2018 as well as the ILO’s follow up meetings with TESDA and other key stakeholders in February 2019. Through these discussion, it has become apparent that the Government and the private sector need the external assistance not only to fill critical gaps in data, research, knowledge (particularly the latest good practices and lessons learned and in the emerging issue areas such as the core skills set for future jobs) and institutional capacity, but also a strong push to implement new and enhanced TVET models of governance, finance and industry engagement in line with the international best practices.

In other words, the project will address the critical weak linkages of the NTESDP to make its vision realized. The project interventions will focus on these areas where the government has identified priority agenda but lacks specific actions or critical technical contents to operationalize the agenda. The action plan with funding requirements of the NTESDP found in Annex 6 of the plan document has been a good guide in

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prioritizing the project interventions while avoiding duplication of what the Government will do without external assistance.

To do so, the project will leverage the technical support and expertise from the Global Britain Education and Skills Hub (GB Hub) as well as the country office-regional office-technical departments of the ILO and its projects in collaboration with key local stakeholders. Industry engagement and equity concerns are mainstreamed into its activities, but the latter will also benefit from a special geographic target to the poorest region.

In the following, it will be discussed how the proposed outputs and activities of the Philippine component will contribute to the four Outputs in the Theory of Change (ToC) diagram presented above.

Improved level of learning outcomes from TVET and secondary to tertiary education:

In the case of the Philippines, achieving improvement in learning outcomes has to begin with addressing the challenge of the significant out-of-school children and youth (OOSCY) problem reviewed earlier. The latter is primarily attributable to the issue of affordability of education, which is a key element of the third Output of ToC and further discussed there.

The learning outcome of the TVET graduates in terms of assessment and certification of competency standards appears reasonable, hence not a key objective of the Philippine component of the project. Regardless of that, NTESDP indicates that the Government will substantially increase the number of qualified trainers/Master Trainers and assessors in key industry sectors and in higher PQF levels, which will contribute to better learning outcomes. The learning outcomes of the new Technical-Vocational-Livelihood Track (TVL) faces the acute bottleneck in curriculum contents and teacher training, but this is a transitionary friction and the Government is working on it. The learning outcome of the vocational elements in tertiary education such as those leading to NC V will have to be assessed in the new context of the UAQTEA implementation, but it is not a priority identified in NTESDP, either.

Key issue of the TVET reform in the Philippines is the education-industry mismatch, which is linked to the second Output of ToC below and further discussed there.

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Improved relevance of TVET and secondary to tertiary education to the skills sets needed by industry:

The weak relevance is the central and perennial problem of the TVET system in the Philippines. Addressing it is one of the five objectives of NTESDP. Under the objective, the Plan lists programmes of strategic importance such as: study on employment of TVET graduates; the substantial increase of scholarship (including scholarship for tertiary education under UAQTEA); support to the TechVoc and Livelihood Track (TVL) of high school under K-12; joint delivery of the Voucher Program for the TVL Track, the JobStart Program; 1 and training advocacy aimed at expanding labour force participation of the economically active age population. Industry Boards (IBs) development is listed under a different NTESDP objective of conducive and enabling environment for quality TVET. In addition, TESDA recently issued Circular 085 2018, “Implementing Guidelines on the Establishment of Institutional Arrangements with Industry Boards or Industry Associations.” Substantially increasing the number of qualified trainers/Master Trainers and assessors in key industry sectors and in higher PQF levels is part of the planned activities for this purpose, too.

The project will supplement these strategic moves of the Government by supporting focused and updated review of the Industry Boards (IBs) experiences in the country and the Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) experiences abroad as well as the present system of apprenticeship, help define scope and structure of the sustainable IBs/SSCs, strengthen the secretariat function of selected IBs/SSCs, help them conduct sector skills needs assessment and anticipation and review TVI capacities to deliver skills requirements of the sectors. The nitty-gritty of the history and latest development of the Sector Skills Councils in UK is what the Filipino policymakers and industry leaders are keen to learn and replicate, among others. The presence of the GB Hub closely connected to the UK Prosperity Fund Skills Program shall be optimally leveraged to maximize key learnings from the UK experience. The project will further support the IBs/SSCs deliver skills training based on sector requirements.

Another key objective of the NTESDP leading to the improved relevance of TVET is to prepare the workforce for the challenges posed by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The Plan has a long list of programmes, but most important ones are: skills needs

1 JobStart is an apprenticeship programme implemented by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE). Originally piloted under the funding of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), it has been enacted into an Act Institutionalizing the Nationwide Implementation of the JobStart Philippines Programs and Providing Funds Therefor, Republic Act No. 10869 of 2016, otherwise known as the JobStart Philippines Act.

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anticipation; increase in STEM contents; increase in higher skills graduates; and lifelong learning. Apparently, this is the area where the operationalization of the agenda is at the incipient stage, and TESDA’s expectation to the project’s contribution is high.

The project will bolster the agenda by: sharing the key concepts of making TVET students ready for future jobs and adaptable; conducting action-oriented studies (e.g., a tracer study of the retrenched workers due to technological changes); introducing new entrepreneurship training for digital and green economy; and help TESDA develop models of wider skills clustering that will make career shift easier.

In this area, ILO’s expertise will be leveraged at maximum. The Senior Skills and Employability Specialist at the ILO Regional Office was the supervising editor of Skills and the Future of Work, a seminal report released last year as part of the Future of Work centenary initiative of ILO. This, together with the growing knowledge base on Future of Work including the recently released Report of the Global Commission on Future of Work, will provide the foundation of the discussion to support the reform to make the Filipino workforce 21st century jobs-ready.

The on-going regional project of the ILO, Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Programme (Women in STEM), has been the laboratory to operationalize the core skills set needed for such transformation. It is a case of the Industry-led designing of the training with the world class enterprises of IT-BPM sector tapping the TESDA scholarship. It has also partnered with the Rural Impact Sourcing (RIS) programme of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (D-ICT), bringing the disadvantaged women to the ICT training to dramatically change their career. ILO has strengthened the soft skills elements such as critical thinking, communication and collaboration. The proposed project under the UK Prosperity Fund Skills Program will use this as the building block and conduct action research to explore how it will impact the career of women and other disadvantaged groups in rural provinces when the ICT and other future core skills are brought in the rural setting.

Improved financing mechanisms and affordability of TVET and secondary to tertiary education provision:

Establishment of alternative financing of TVET is included as part of the legislative agenda included in the NTESDP. TESDA proposed several recommendations in the past on the basis of studies and missions relative to the establishment of Levy Grant

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System. Stakeholders, especially industry, have not made any concrete decisions to date. TESDA recognizes the contentious nature of the Levy Grant System.

To break the stalemate, the project will help the government and industry experiment several models of public-private financing of TVET. These will include the skills development fund model; the strategic use of the TVET scholarship (and possibly the voucher system of DepEd); and the performance related financing scheme for training institutes. It will also facilitate discussion of various models of TVET financing with the latest experiences and lessons learned.

The affordability of education and training is a thorny issue in the Philippines where the conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme struggles to increase the school enrolment rate in the poverty-stricken areas and the numerous OOSY remain key challenge. This is despite the on-going education for all drive through K-12 compulsory education and the UAQTEA. The latter not only mandates the free tuition and miscellaneous fees in state universities and colleges (SUCs).

The project will support key impact assessment of the education for all initiative on TVET demand and enrolment. Affordability will be one of the key variables to be analysed.

Enabling policy, planning and legal environment strengthened for financing, equity and industry TVET/ secondary to tertiary education linkages:

This area corresponds to the first of the five objectives of NTESDP although focus is more on quality TVET service delivery and agile response to global drivers of change, e.g., green and future jobs. Other specific elements covered are: inter-agency and public-private collaboration; response to key growth areas; research-data-knowledge management; quality assurance mechanism (e.g., information management and performance monitoring systems); and TVET advocacy.

The project interventions in this area will be selective to focus specific research on capacity gap, gender and inclusion gap; development of standards for selected key employment sectors and for higher skills.

A special attention will be required for the out-of-school children (OOSC) and school dropouts where a high gender disparity is found. The OOSC rates were 4.6% for primary in 2016, 7.3% for lower secondary in 2016, and 20.2% for upper secondary in

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2015.2 The school dropout rates were 12.5% primary and 11.5% lower secondary in 2015.3 Gender gap is pronounced in both cases: Two-thirds (65.0%) of OOSC aged 5-15 years in 2017 were boys;4 and male dropouts are significantly higher than female with 15.2% male dropout at the primary level as compared to 9.4% female, and 14.5% male dropout at lower secondary level while 8.3% female do.5 This is problematic when considering participation in the labour force. Men participate in the labour force at much higher percentages and a significant proportion was employed in unskilled labour while women participated in paid labour at much lower rates but were more likely to occupy higher salaried positions in the formal sector.6 Eighty seven per cent (87%) of 3.8 million out-of-school children/youth are 16 to 24 years old.7 This group of out-of-school youth (OOSY) should be an important target of the TVET interventions.

The unemployed youth is another marginalized group to be taken care of. Out of 2.363 million unemployed persons in 2016, youth of 15-24 years old counted almost half.8 Youth unemployment rate (13.5% in 2016) remains significantly higher than the overall unemployment rate (5.4% in 2016) although there has been an improvement from the level of 17.6% in 2010. DOLE also noted that 4.35 million youth were not in education and not in employment (NEE) in 2016, representing 22.1% of the youth population of 16-25 years old. The DOLE report said that jobseekers who are college undergraduates or graduates are less likely to get employed compared to jobseekers with lower level of educational attainment because the former have higher reservation wages.

The Project will pay special attention to the marginalized and vulnerable groups in the Philippines and help key stakeholders translate these considerations into action including in the poorest part of the country. The marginalized and vulnerable groups would include women and youth, particularly out-of-school youth, NEET, informally employed, working in MSMEs, unemployed, disabled, of poor families, of indigenous people and other disadvantaged groups. These will be the analytical angles of the review and assessment, policy dialogue, design of standards and training, and

2 An estimate by the UNESCO Institute of Statistics referred in David et al. (2018a) “Out-of-school children: Changing landscape of school attendance and barriers to completion,” PIDS discussion paper series No. 2018-25. 3 Ibid. 4 David et al. (2018b) “Boys are still left behind in basic education,” PIDS policy notes No. 2018-20. 5 David et al. (2018a). 6 David et al. (2018b). 7 The Annual Poverty Indicator Survey (APIS) 2016 of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). 8 DOLE (2018) JobsFit Report 2022. The figures in the same paragraph are from the same report.

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monitoring and evaluation. The ILO’s expertise on the labour market information and analysis as well as special interventions to these vulnerable groups will be tapped to address the equity concerns on them. For reaching out rural youth, collaboration with the Department of Information, Communication and Technology will be explored especially for delivering soft skills training.

Besides some of the ILO research and projects mentioned above, there are other on-going activities that the proposed project could tap such as the following: research and activities to support the growth of job-rich agro value chains; collaboration with TESDA under its skills-entrepreneurship programme; and the ASEAN Green Jobs knowledge sharing initiative that will further help advance the country’s commitment to the Paris Agreement facilitated under the Just Transition towards Environmentally Sustainable Economies and Societies for All project over the last few years. Many of the proposed activities under the project are backed by the in-depth analysis and insights developed through the past and on-going activities of the ILO in collaboration with the constituents and other key stakeholders on the ground. Among others, the experience of employment support in conflict-affected Mindanao gave several novel learnings to succeed in the challenging environment.

The Project will work on three or more selected sectors from the seven key employment generating sectors and support the strategic responses of the NTESDP.9 Temporarily, three sectors have been suggested as the target sectors of the Project: IT-BPM, construction, and fruits and vegetable under the agriculture, fishery and forestry. The eventual selection of the target sectors will be subject to further consultation with key stakeholders including the leading industry associations of each. ILO’s experiences of working with these sectors under the past and on-going projects in the Philippines will be fully leveraged to address the specific constraints of the respective sectors/subsectors.

i http://industry.gov.ph/comprehensive-national-industrial-strategy/ ii ILO (2017) ASEAN in Transformation: How technology is changing jobs and enterprises. iii NTESDP.

9 The NTESDP has prioritized seven key employment generating sectors – these include industries that have large employment bases and are growing very rapidly (tourism/hotels/restaurants; construction; IT-BPM; and transport, communication and storage); and industries that have large employment bases but have exhibited negative or minimal growth rate in the past with the need for revitalization (agriculture, fisheries and forestry including agro-processing; and manufacturing).

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iv The Republic Act No. 10931, the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act (UAQTEA), was enacted in March 2018. It mandates the free tuition and miscellaneous fees in state universities and colleges (SUCs). v More are reportedly shifting from the secondary vocational schools to general high schools under the K-12 system. vi Those finishing a Technical-Vocational-Livelihood track in Grade 12 of Senior High School and passing the competency-based assessment administered by TESDA, obtain a National Certificate Level II (NC II). vii The former “education subcontracting system” has shifted to the voucher system which will allow students to go to private high schools when the public schools seats made free under K-12 (education for all) are full. viii 2010 Population and Housing data at the PSA website. It found 1,443,000 persons or 1.57% of the household population had disability. https://psa.gov.ph/tags/persons-disability ix An estimate by the UNESCO Institute of Statistics referred in David et al. (2018a) “Out-of-school children: Changing landscape of school attendance and barriers to completion,” PIDS discussion paper series No. 2018-25. x Ibid. xi David et al. (2018b) “Boys are still left behind in basic education,” PIDS policy notes No. 2018-20. xii David et al. (2018a). xiii David et al. (2018b). xiv The Annual Poverty Indicator Survey (APIS) 2016 of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). xv This number, based on the APIS 2016, is significantly lower than 6.34 million OOSY reported in the Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS) 2013 by the PSA and referred in the NTESDP. xvi The deployment statistics by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) indicates a total of 2,112,331 OFWs were deployed in 2016. The survey on overseas Filipinos by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reports that the number of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) who worked abroad at any time during the period April to September 2017 was estimated at 2.3 million. Besides these, another popularly referred figure is over 10 million on the basis of the stock estimate of overseas Filipinos as of December 2013 (the last update). However, the total figure of 10,238,614 by CFO includes permanent migrants and those without valid residence or work permits. The OFWs equivalent of the CFO 2013 figure was 4,207,018. CFO is momentarily not releasing any updates pending the approval of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) Board of the proposed framework on the counting of overseas Filipinos which will make the estimate a more comprehensive and harmonized among different migration sources of government agencies. xvii An ILO estimate on the basis of POEA data on the land-based deployment (with disaggregation between new hire and rehire) and the sea-based deployment (no disaggregation). xviii “[W]e have plenty of certified, skilled and world-class construction workers, but due to meager salary, poor benefits, unsafe and unhealthy working conditions and [since they are] lowly regarded… they prefer to work abroad after a few months of training and actual field experience here because they are dignified there, they are given higher salary and benefits there, and are given free decent housing and paid vacation,” said the president of the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), the country’s biggest labour group. [Business World article of 15 Feb. 2019, https://www.bworldonline.com/duterte-flags-build-build-build-setback-due-to-insufficient-workforce/] xix Ibid. xx ILO (1996) Industry Boards (IBs) and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) Partnership. xxi Implementing Guidelines on the Establishment of Institutional Arrangements with Industry Boards or Industry Associations, issued on 3 Dec. 2018 with immediate effect.