After several years with no nationwide standard on how Web Development should be taught in technical and vocational training centers in the Philippines, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) has finally released this year the Training Regulation that will serve “as basis for which the competency-based curriculum and instructional materials and competency assessment tools are developed”. The Training Regulation created “defines the competency standards for a national qualification and how such qualification can be gained, assessed and be given recognition. “In short, the TESDA Training Regulation will dictate how tech-voc training centers will be teaching web development in the Philippines and how the web development graduates of training centers will be assessed as “Certified Web Developers”.

The Web Development Training Regulation provides four types of certification:

Certificate of Competency in Developing Responsive Web Design (Web Development COC-1) – This is given to students who wish to focus only on designing websites for desktops and mobiles mainly through HTML and CSS. COC-1 certified students and look for a career in web design.
Certificate of Competency in Creating Interactive Websites (Web Development COC-2) – This certification is for students who are looking for a career in Front-End Web Development. Students will be taught the de facto standard for client-side scripting: JavaScript, to create interactive and animated front-end user interfaces and applications.
Certificate of Competency in Developing Website Backend (Web Development COC-3) – The third type of certification is for students looking to focus on programming a website’s “back-end“. This includes learning server-side languages such as PHP, Python, Java, .NET, etc; Learning to design and develop databases; and setting up the actual web servers.
National Certificate Level III on Web Development (Web Development NC III) – The final certification is a comprehensive certification that shows that the student is adept in all three web development core competencies mentioned above. Holders of this National Certificate are meant to be Full Stack Developers capable to handle the full workflow of web development.

Working with TESDA’s Qualification Standards Office (QSO) for over a year, EACOMM Corporation consultants (through the invitation of the Animation Council of the Philippines) were heavily involved in the creation and validation of the Training Regulation and its corresponding Competency Assessment Tools (CATs).