Solon alarmed over high failure rate of PHL nurses in English tests

Date Posted: 10/12/2017

A lawmaker is seeking a meeting with education officials and nursing school deans to discuss how to address the reported high failure rate of Filipino nurses in English tests.

“The Philippines is country that flaunts its English competence but apparently that assertion is a balloon full of hot air when it comes to the English competencies of our nursing graduates,” said Bagong Henerasyon party-list Representative Bernadette Herrera-Dy.

She was reacting to reports that 90 percent of 200 Filipino nurses failed an English language test required to work at a hospital in the United Kingdom.

Nurses from non-European Union countries are required to take an English oral, reading, writing, and listening test prepared by the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

“This is a very serious matter because about 200,000 nursing graduates are jobless, and we have about 80,000 nursing graduates every year, and about 25,000 take the nursing licensure exams of the Professional Regulations Commission (PRC) annually,” Dy said.

She added that thousands of “near-hires” in the BPO industry needed further training, including English training, to be hired.

Dy challenged the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) nd the nursing colleges to address these issues to prevent future nursing graduates from encountering the same fate in the future.

Dy also asked to meet with the Department of Education (DepEd) officials to “address the roots of the English competence problems in the basic education levels.”

The PRC reported that 6,836 out of 14,322 nursing graduates passed the Nurse Licensure Examination in Manila, Baguio, Cagayan de Oro, Cebu, Davao, Iloilo, Legazpi, Lucena, Pagadian, Tacloban, Tuguegarao, and Zamboanga last November 2016.

This year’s nursing exams will take place on November 25 and 26. —Rie Takumi/KBK, GMA News

Published Date: October 10, 2017
Source: GMA News