ENGLISH EDUCATION firm Hopkins International Partners, Inc. said it is working with the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) to match language education to industry requirements.
The People Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP) has released minimum and ideal English language standards for various industries using an international language framework.
“One of the biggest issues in education is nobody understands what industry wants,” Hopkins General Manager Rex Wallen Tan said at the Management Association of the Philippines meeting Tuesday.
“By using these descriptors or levels that makes sense to both parties — academe and industry — we can really do a lot.”
PMAP used the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, an international standard that organizes language proficiency under six levels for common reference. The reference offers detailed descriptions of each level.
Hopkins took the PMAP standards to CHEd to organize support for a policy that would meet industry requirements, with the company due to present the standards to state universities and colleges along with higher education accrediting agencies in October.
Mr. Tan said that the Philippine targets for complying with global English norms are currently unclear.
“All we have are local standards which can be easily changed and move and it’s really non-comparable,” he said.
Filipino students had some of the lowest mean scores in reading comprehension, science, and math in the Program for International Student Assessment ranking released in 2019. — Jenina P. Ibañez