Abstract:

In the International seafaring community, the Philippines is known to have the highest number of employed seafarers aboard international ships. Since 1995 up to the present time, there has been increasing pressure to maritime schools in the country to improve the quality of educational services and produce graduates whose levels of skills and knowledge, match the shipping transport industry’s requirements. The pressure for more qualified and competent graduates of maritime educational programs arose from the changes and development in the safety, security, designs and technology in the fields of shipping and transport services. International shipping companies have become more stringent in hiring seamen to work aboard their ships because of the imposition by the International Maritime Organization or the IMO of various mandatory requirements and measures for member countries to comply with the ratified provisions of the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping.
In this regard, the Philippines’ Commission on Higher Education (CHED) called upon the maritime schools nationwide to be responsive to the needs of their students. Schools were directed to offer the currículum in each maritime program according to the prescribed quality standards. In this study, the responsiveness of the schools towards the needs of their students have been measured. The areas of investigation included variables such as : currículum; instructional materials, teaching approaches and methodologies; school facilities and equipment ; and instructors’ competence. Only four maritime schools were purposively seclected based on their fitness to the the following criteria: accreditation of the schools to the Philippines’ Commission on Higher Education (CHED); certification by the International Standard Organization (ISO) to be compliant to their prescribed standards, location, and the number of students students. A total of 540 respondents from these four maritime schools, were randomly selected as respondents of the study. They were the 400 third year students and 140 regular faculty members . Using the quota system, 35 faculty members were randomly selected and taken as respondents from each of the four schools. For students, a total of 100 were taken as simple size per school, in which 50 came from the the Bachelor of Science in Marine Engineering (BSME) program and another 50 from Bachelor of Science in Marine Transportation (BSMT) program.. The main instrument used in gathering the data was a set written survey questionnaire. The questionnaire was self-constructed and validated. The null hyphothesis was tested using the 0.05 alpha level of significance. Descriptive and inferential statistical tools were utilizad in the treatment of the data. Multi-group análisis of variante with post-hoc or posteriori tests were conducted.
Results disclosed strong evidence of the difference in the quality of educational services provided by only one of the four schools compared to the three other schools, which came out to have the same degree of responsiveness. The weaknesses of the three schools have been attributed to variables such as facilities and equipment, instructional materials and methodologies or approaches .Instructors’ competence came out to be a strenght of these schools.

Keywords:

Responsiveness, maritime schools in the Philippines, needs of students, quality education.