SIXTEEN overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Cambodia successfully passed the Philippine Licensure Examination for Professional Teachers (LEPT) in Thailand.
As the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) made the announcement on Monday, Chairman Prospero De Vera III said the achievement showcased Filipinos’ enhanced competencies in qualifying for better international teaching positions.
Six out of the 16 passers have completed the “CHED Developing Global Filipino Teachers (CHED-DGFT)” pilot program implemented through a memorandum of cooperation signed between the commission and the Philippine Embassy in Phnom Penh in October 2020.
It seeks to equip, capacitate and enhance the competencies of Filipino teachers in Cambodia so that they could qualify for better teaching careers.
“The commission congratulates the 16 OFWS for their outstanding performance in the recent [LEPT] in Bangkok. I commend their hard work, dedication, and perseverance in pursuing their dreams,” De Vera said. “Their success is a testament to the quality of our internationalization initiative with Cambodia, [as they support] their families and friends.”
“We thank our embassy in Phnom Penh for assuring that the DGFT program has reached all 1,006 Filipino teachers who are not licensed professional teachers, [so that they could boost] their competencies to qualify for better teaching positions and higher salaries in Cambodia,” the CHED official added. “With our joint efforts, Filipino teachers are continuously flourishing in the Cambodian education system.”
Filipino teachers in Cambodia, Ambassador Amelia Aquino said, are extremely delighted that the commission is supporting their professionalization. They are sought after in Cambodia as they go beyond just teaching and educating; they also nurture their students.
“Thank you to CHED for piloting the DGFT…in Cambodia,” Aquino remarked.
With the program’s success, De Vera vowed to expand the same to Filipinos in other parts of the world: “[We] will work with our foreign-service posts so that we can reach more overseas Filipino teachers.”
The DGFT—a collaboration among CHED, the Philippine Embassy in Phnom Penh, and Philippine universities like Saint Paul University, Cebu Normal University, and Philippine Normal University—aims to assist overseas Filipino teachers in Cambodia, including professionals who have yet to graduate from a formal teacher-education program, in-service teachers, graduates who failed to pass the Philippine licensure examination, and teachers who are engaged in TESOL, or Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.