The Teacher Education Council (TEC) has launched a 10-year roadmap that will serve as a guide to design relevant, responsive, innovative, creative, and collaborative programs to advance teacher education in the Philippines.

The 2035 Teacher Education Roadmap seeks to empower teachers through scholarships, training, upskilling, and reskilling, as well as to address employment mismatch through a harmonized database.

In an ambush interview, TEC Office of the Secretariat Executive Director V Jennie Jocson said the roadmap aims to help “reshape and reframe” the specializations of teachers in line with their actual functions.

“For instance, the teacher specialized in English on her Bachelor’s degree, but the teacher has been teaching other subject, she must be redirected to that new specialization,” she said.

Such mismatch, which has been identified nationwide, could be addressed through the upskilling and reskilling of practicing teachers, she added.

Established to improve and further strengthen the quality of teacher education in the country, TEC said priority areas with significant supply gaps are early childhood education, values education, and special needs and inclusive education.

The Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) recognizes the mismatch, which it said may be addressed through policy recommendations under the roadmap.

“One of them is really a shortage of Math and Science instructors, another is general shortage in our TVET (Technical-Vocational Education and Training) instructors, for example, which is quite crucial for me as part of TESDA,” TESDA Director General Jose Francisco Benitez said in a separate interview.

The Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) also expressed support for advancing the roadmap to improve teachers’ education nationwide.

In a speech, PRC Chairperson Charito Zamora said the inter-agency collaboration will ensure that teaching, training, and licensing will be aligned with the “evolving demands” of the Philippine education system.

“By identifying policy gaps and proposing reforms in teachers’ education, TEC sets the direction while the PRC works to implement these changes, particularly in licensure examinations,” she said.