177 Philippine nursing schools facing closure

MANILA – A total of 177 nursing schools throughout the Philippines are facing closure due to the perennial failure of their graduates to pass the nursing licensure examinations, the head of a government agency in charge of higher education disclosed.

Dr. Emmanuel Angeles, the chairman of the Commission on Higher Education (Ched), said that in some of the schools, not one of their graduates passed the nursing exams given by the Professional Regulation Commission for the last five years.

But Angeles added that Ched is now verifying its data before issuing an order to the erring schools to phase out their nursing degree programmes. He emphasized the crackdown forms an essential part of Ched‘s determined efforts to raise the standard of education in colleges and universities, including those run by the government.

“This phase-out process involves schools that have zero passing percentage in licensure examinations,” Angeles pointed out. “We are now way behind our neighbors like Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. And soon, Vietnam my even surpass our standards. Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam are the Philippine partners in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) that also includes Brunei, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar (Burma).

The Ched chairman also recalled that part of the crackdown on low-performing universities and colleges in the government licensure tests was the recent closure of 11 law schools throughout the country.

In a related development, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) noted that fewer Filipino nurses are seeking employment in the US.

Former senator Ernesto Herrera, the secretary general of the TUCP which is the country’s trade union, explained this was based on the fewer number of Filipino nurses who took the US licensure exams for nurses.

From January to September this year, Herrera said only 11,834 Filipino nurses took the US National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX), compared to the 15,079 who took the took the tests for the same period in 2008. He added that from July to September 2009 alone, only 3,582 Filipino nurses took the NCLEX for the first time, which represented a reduction by 1,660 from the 5,242 who took the test in the same quarter last year.

According to Herrera, an NCLEX testing center was established in Manila to make it easier for the Filipino nurses to take the exams. However, he said there was still a sharp reduction in the number of Filipino nurses who want to take up the NCLEX.

One possible reason for the reduction, Herrera said, is the recession now being experienced in the US as he pointed out: “The confidence of foreign workers on America’s economic supremacy has clearly been shaken by the staggering job losses there.”

Herrera observed that 7.6 million Americans have lost their jobs since the start of the US recession in December 2007.

However, the TUCP chief said Filipinos still account for four out of every 10 foreign nurses seeking to enter the US nursing profession.

For 2008, a total of 20,746 Filipino nurses took the NCLEX for the first time, or a 3.5 percent decrease from the 21,299 Filipino nurses who took the test in 2007, Herrera pointed out.

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