Iloilo Welding Grads Run Shopee Live for Tita and DepEd Logs None of It
TESDA tracks promised SMAW certificates and shipyard pay. The graduates ended up holding ring lights in their aunt's sari-sari, and no one is counting.
A welding NC II from a TESDA track in Iloilo was supposed to lead to a shipyard in Lapu-Lapu, a contract in Batangas, or an overseas deployment through a Manila agency. A lot of the 2024 cohort is running their tita's Shopee Live slot from 8 PM to midnight instead, hawking ukay tops and instant pancit canton with a ring light propped on a rice cooker.
Ask DepEd how many. They cannot tell you. The K to 12 Tracer Study has not been refreshed for the post-pandemic batches in any usable form, and the senior high TVL data that does exist gets cut off at graduation. What happens 12 months later is somebody else's problem.
The pipeline that wasn't
The pitch for TVL welding was concrete: SMAW, GTAW, a TESDA assessment, and a foot in the door at a shipyard or a fabrication shop. Iloilo schools bought the booths, the rods, the PPE that mostly fit. Industry partners signed MOAs that looked good at ribbon-cutting.
The shipyard slots did not scale with the graduate count. The fabrication shops in Mandurriao wanted experience the schools could not simulate. Overseas recruiters wanted older candidates with logged hours the kids could not yet show, plus medicals and certifications the family could not afford to keep current while waiting for a callback.
So the 18-year-old with a welding certificate went home, helped his tita who already had a respectable follower count on Shopee, and discovered that four hours of live selling pays better than waiting on a foreman who never had a slot to begin with.
What DepEd doesn't track
The agency reports enrollment, completion, and TESDA assessment pass rates. Those are the numbers that fit a press release. Employment in the specific track the student trained for, 6 months out, 12 months out, 24 months out, is not a published series at the division level.
PSA labor force surveys catch some of this in aggregate. They do not tell you that the Iloilo welding cohort of 2024 is disproportionately running live sales, food delivery, or unpaid help in a family store. That data would require following the same students by name, with consent, across years. Nobody funded it.
Education reform reviews have repeatedly flagged weak tracer systems for senior high TVL graduates. The recommendations sit in reports. The next batch enrolls in TVL welding this August because the booths are already paid for and the slot has to be filled.
The cost of not counting
Without follow-up data, the division superintendent cannot tell the regional office that the welding track in this particular school is not landing graduates in welding jobs. The regional office cannot tell central. Central keeps approving the same track allocations because the assessment pass rates look fine.
The graduate running Shopee Live is not failing. She is improvising past a curriculum that ended at her diploma and a labor market that never picked up the phone. Her income is real, taxable in theory, untracked in practice, and entirely dependent on her tita's algorithm luck.
The welding rods sit in the stockroom. The MOA with the shipyard renews on autopilot. The Grade 10 enrollee signing up next month for TVL welding will not be told that the cohort ahead of her is selling tumblers on live, because nobody at DepEd is in a position to know.
