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MANILA, Philippines — After years of being bounced across departments and loaded with new mandates, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) may be headed for a major upgrade as a congressional body says proposals to make it a full-fledged department “merit serious consideration."
The Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II) expressed openness to the idea in its more than 600-page final report submitted to Congress this week, a sweeping review that traces long-running failures across the education sector and lays out proposed fixes.
In the case of TESDA, the commission said the agency’s current setup — where it simultaneously regulates, delivers, and assesses technical-vocational training — creates “fundamental conflicts of interest” that weaken oversight and distort the training market.
Addressing those conflicts, the report said, would require fixes to how it operates, starting with its current form as an attached agency of the Department of Labor and Employment.
Conflicting, critical roles
EDCOM II said one proposal is to elevate TESDA into a full-fledged department with a redesigned governance structure, a move the commission said “merits serious consideration” given the scale of the agency’s structural problems.
The idea, raised by the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) Education Task Force during stakeholder consultations, is aimed at untangling TESDA’s overlapping roles as regulator, training provider, and assessor.
TESDA Director General Kiko Benitez, in a write-up accompanying the report, acknowledged many of the structural flaws flagged by EDCOM II persist from issues first identified in the first EDCOM study in 1991. "TESDA's mandate has grown, but its manpower has not. Its role as both regulator and implementer creates a conflict and a burden," Benitez wrote.
At the very least, EDCOM II said TESDA’s direct training functions should be separated from its regulatory role, with TESDA-run training institutions either fully devolved to local government units or reorganized as autonomous entities operating under the same regulatory framework as private training providers.
EDCOM II spent three years assessing the education sector through consultations, commissioned studies and hearings with government agencies. The commission's final report includes a 10-year reform plan addressing issues across all areas — including technical-vocational education, which the report found has been fragmented and underfunded despite its outsized role in upskilling the workers that prop up the country's economy.
In its report, the commission said TESDA’s current status as an attached agency limits its ability to carry out its expanding mandate, noting that it faces “structural disadvantages in inter-agency coordination, budget negotiations, and position classification.”
"The lack of departmental status limits TESDA’s voice in cabinet-level deliberations on economic and social policy, delays approval processes for critical programs and positions, and constrains its ability to secure commensurate budget allocations despite expanded mandates," the report stated.
Reforming TESDA's structure, according to the commission, has become urgent, as its responsibilities have expanded dramatically through successive laws without commensurate increases in resources.
Although TESDA’s budget accounts for only about 2% of total education spending, scholarships now consume between 50% to 70% of its annual budget, the report said.
An agency pulled in different directions
Created in 1994 as a coordinating authority, TESDA was not designed to be a major training provider. Legislative debates cited in the report show that lawmakers deliberately avoided giving the TESDA director general Cabinet rank, to prevent policy conflicts with the labor secretary who chairs its board.
Despite this, the report noted, the TESDA director general has held de facto Cabinet rank since 2004, while the agency itself has been repeatedly transferred across departments: from the Department of Labor and Employment to the Office of the Cabinet Secretary, to the Department of Trade and Industry, and then back to DOLE.
These shifts, EDCOM II said, have prevented TESDA from establishing a stable institutional home and weakened its ability to plan long-term, coordinate with other agencies, and negotiate for resources.
The agency now manages six out of eight government scholarship programs, none of which existed in its original 1994 charter.
TESDA takes up just 2% of total education spending yet handles qualifications frameworks, enterprise training regulation, and free TVET provision, all added through laws passed after its creation.
Devolution not fulfilled
EDCOM II also pointed out that TESDA's 1994 charter explicitly requires the agency to eventually transfer training functions to local governments, allowing it to focus on regulation and coordination.
Section 29 mandates TESDA "formulate, implement and finance a specific plan to develop the capability of local government units to assume ultimately the responsibility for effectively providing community-based technical education."
Thirty years later, only six institutions have been devolved — five from 2004-2006, one more in 2012. A 2004 plan promised phased implementation through 2030. Progress on this, however, stalled.
Yet TESDA keeps expanding its training operations. The agency allocates P8.7 billion — 40% of its budget — to running training institutions when the law says these should operate under local governments.
Proposed modernization act
EDCOM II has drafted a TESDA Modernization Act that would restructure governance and force compliance with the long-ignored devolution mandate.
The bill would transform TESDA's unwieldy 22-member board — expanded from 13 in the original charter — into a streamlined Board of Advisers meeting twice yearly for policy direction and oversight. Operational authority would shift to a cabinet-level director-general overseeing six deputies handling major functional portfolios.
It would also unlock the TESDA Development Fund, which has accumulated P543.9 million but spent only P13 million — 2.39% — on training improvements, according to the commission. Congress never enacted a lump-sum appropriation the 1994 law required, and the fund has sat largely idle for decades.
This was also acknowledged by Benitez, who himself formerly served as EDCOM commissioner as a House lawmaker prior to his appointment as head of TESDA in August 2024.
"Most of the agency’s budget now goes to scholarships, which weren’t even part of its original mandate," Benitez said in his write-up.
Slow to respond, graduates mismatched to jobs
TESDA's structural problems show up in the quality and relevance of its programs.
Currently, training regulation development takes six months to two years, which the report says undermines the agency's ability to respond to industry changes.
TESDA averages only 15 new training regulations annually. For instance, Contact Center Services NC II (TESDA's training curriculum for call center workers) hasn't been updated since 2003 despite "dramatic ... transformation" in the call center industry.
Only 10 National Industry Boards have been established since 1994, concentrated in five sectors, according to EDCOM II.
