By Revin Mikhael D. Ochave Reporter
PHINMA Education Holdings, Inc. hopes to assist increase access to education for Filipinos by expanding its network of inexpensive schools, an organization executive said.
“Our aspiration is that each Filipino be given a likelihood to pursue their education and make their lives higher,” Christopher “Completely satisfied” A. Tan, PHINMA Education country chief for the Philippines, said in an interview with BusinessWorld.
In July, the Philippine Statistics Authority said the country’s poverty rate shrank to fifteen.5% in 2023, reminiscent of 17.54 million Filipinos living in poverty, compared with the 18.1% estimate in 2021.
“Our dream is to be a college network that produces hundreds of board passers yearly. This implies we’re producing hundreds of pros yearly because that’s how we’ll make an impact on poverty,” Mr. Tan said.
“By producing professionals, that may mean that you just’ll have more families that can have money flow to maneuver out of poverty,” he added.
Mr. Tan has been with PHINMA Education for seven years. Prior to this, he was a human rights lawyer and was also involved in microfinance and development work.
PHINMA Education is the education unit of the Del Rosario-led conglomerate PHINMA Corp. It began operating within the education services sector in 2004 after the acquisition of PHINMA Araullo University in Nueva Ecija.
Other PHINMA Education schools include PHINMA Cagayan de Oro College, PHINMA University of Pangasinan, PHINMA University of Iloilo, and Southwestern University PHINMA in Cebu City. The corporate also operates Horizon Karawang in West Java, Indonesia.
PHINMA Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ramon R. del Rosario, Jr. previously said that PHINMA Education now has 167,000 students following the recent acquisition of a college in Cavite that has 3,000 students.
Mr. Tan said PHINMA Education wants more schools to serve low-income students because it could help widen education access within the country.
“We would really like to create a paradigm shift in the way in which schools operate. Immediately, they don’t need to serve low-income students for multiple reasons, but a part of which is that they don’t necessarily think that it makes economic sense,” he said.
“What we would really like to do is to persuade quite a bit more schools that this isn’t us being nice. That is double bottom line. This can be a public good, but it surely also makes financial sense. Once we try this, then we shift the industry. The goal isn’t to dominate the industry, but to cut back poverty,” he added.
To enhance the country’s quality of education, Mr. Tan said efforts should begin throughout the early years of the coed’s journey.
“What do we want to do with grade school? We want to make sure that that teacher education and teacher training is solid. You remove policies that make it hard for teachers to concentrate on their core work. Many teachers spend quite a lot of their hours on administrative issues. We should always make sure that that they’ve good teacher training,” he said.
“We also must make sure that that we now have good assessment systems, not only grades because that will be rigged. It’s good to have standardized systems. We also should make sure that to cope with problems with malnutrition,” he added.
Along with this, Mr. Tan said the country needs an academic system that’s more aware of the needs of local employers.
“We should always have the option to know the needs of local employers,” he said.
“Nonetheless, we cannot control Filipinos in the event that they want to search out jobs outside the country. But I’m hoping that we, as a rustic, will give Filipinos the chance to decide on,” he added.
Mr. Tan said PHINMA Education can be implementing energetic learning across its schools, because it helps improve the abilities of each teachers and students.
“Should you do energetic learning, you shift your role from being a lecturer to a facilitator of learning. Which means that you may have to listen to how individual students struggle with the content,” he said.
“All of us learn best once we grapple with an issue reasonably than once we are passively listening to a lecture. It’s about deliberate practice. You really do it,” he added.
In October, Phoenix Investments II Pte. Ltd. accomplished its P2.52-billion initial investment in PHINMA Education. The quantity represented 70.22% of KKR’s total investment value P3.59 billion. Phoenix Investments is an investment vehicle of funds managed by global investment firm KKR. The funds might be used to finance PHINMA Education’s growth plans.
PHINMA Education saw an 84% overall board passing rate, with 31 board exam topnotchers in various fields, for the college 12 months 2023-2024.
