There are 5 million young people in the Philippines who left school without a formal qualification. To support them in their pursuit of work and study, the Philippines Department of Education (DepEd) has established the Alternative Learning System (ALS), which offers equivalency courses in basic education.
Until recently, the only form of assessment in the ALS was a summative test that the majority of learners either failed or did not attempt. To address this problem, DepEd is committed to the micro-certification of components of the ALS syllabus, so that learners can leave the program with some formal recognition of their learning, even if they do not complete the course or take the summative test. To help DepEd achieve this goal, UNICEF Philippines is funding the trial of assessment frameworks and instruments developed by Melbourne Metrics in partnership with the Assessment, Curriculum and Technology Research Centre (ACTRC, University of the Philippines), the DepEd Bureau of Alternative Education (DepEd-BAE) and other local stakeholders such as employers of ALS graduates.
The work focuses on the assessment and certification of capabilities taught through the Life Skills modules of the ALS program, which focus on complex competencies or employability skills such as communication, collaboration, problem-solving and leadership. Two of these capabilities were assessed in an initial Feasibility Study conducted from 2020 to 2021, which demonstrated the effectiveness of the Melbourne Metrics method in the ALS context. In 2023, additional funding was made available for the assessment of two more capabilities and the same team was assembled for this second phase of the work. The trials were conducted in ALS Learning Centres in rural and urban locations, and each involved 600 ALS learners, 40 ALS teachers and a range of additional raters who assessed the learners’ capabilities in real-life settings using tools developed by the research team in partnership with the local stakeholders. Participants reported that the tools were easy to use and that the resulting micro-certificates would be of great benefit to ALS learners, providing them with evidence of their levels of performance in capabilities that are highly valued by educators and employers.
Impact
The Philippines is committed to the national implementation of micro-certification in the ALS. As part of the Feasibility Study in 2020 and 2021, Melbourne Metrics and ACTRC developed a five-year strategic roadmap for the implementation, which was subsequently adopted by DepEd. Members of the research team were then invited to contribute to the development of the national policy for the implementation, which instituted the Melbourne Metrics method as the approach to be adopted in the assessment and micro-certification of Life Skills. The method will be implemented across the country to the benefit of approximately 500,000 learners who enrol in the ALS annually.