Bill prescribes basic education for future cybersecurity experts

SEN. Sherwin T. Gatchalian, aiming to ensure future cybersecurity experts start from basic education, prodded the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) to open short-course training programs for cybersecurity experts and software engineers to further “develop talent for cybersecurity” starting from basic education.

Citing the country’s “vulnerability to cybercrimes,” Gatchalian pressed the importance of filling the country’s shortage of cybersecurity experts, citing information conveyed by DICT Secretary John Ivan Uy that the Philippines has only around 200 certified cybersecurity experts compared to Singapore’s 3,000.

Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate Committee on Basic Education, stressed the need to increase enrollment in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) strand of senior high school, where potential cybersecurity talents can be developed, noting there were only 612,857 senior high school students enrolled under the STEM strand, which is equivalent to only 16 percent of senior high school enrollment.

“Even in our basic education system, where we could potentially cultivate the talent going into cybersecurity, it’s virtually non-existent,” the senator pointed out.

He suggested that “skills related to cybersecurity should be taught at the earliest possible opportunity.”

Gatchalian added that “when it comes to coding, for example, I think it should be introduced as early as junior high school level so that students will be exposed and by the time they reach senior high school, they can actually do more complex tasks related to information technology. “When they move to college, they can already specialize in various fields,” he said.

In filing Senate Bill No. 476, to be known as “The Equitable Access to Math and Science Education Act,” he sought to “build a math and science high school in the country’s provinces.”