Human capital investments need to move beyond policies, partnerships, and program commitments and demonstrate measurable results for workers, learners, and the public, speakers said during the closing plenary of the 12th Annual Public Policy Conference (APPC) 2026 on September 17.
The discussion focused on how institutions can translate investments in education, health, technology, and infrastructure into tangible outcomes, with speakers pointing to the need for clearer accountability, stronger public-private partnerships, better use of data, and long-term planning.
Education Undersecretary Dr. Raphaelita Aldaba called for a shift in how the country measures success—from counting enrollment and diplomas to tracking what happens to learners after they leave school.
“We need to move from those traditional indicators towards the indicators that would really measure learner progression and outcomes,” Aldaba said.
She said this would require tracking senior high school cohorts after graduation, including whether they find employment, how long it takes them to land their first job, whether their occupation matches their training, and how their wages or earnings progress.
The system should also track whether graduates transition to college or technical and vocational education and training (TVET) or pursue entrepreneurship, she added.
Aldaba said schools should increasingly be accountable for what happens to learners after graduation, rather than simply meeting enrollment and completion targets.
If we really want to achieve our goals, then there's no escape. We really need to measure learner progression and outcomes,” she said.
Aldaba added that schools “should increasingly be accountable for learner progression and post-school outcomes, and not simply enrollment and diplomas.”
She said the DepEd recently held a dialogue with more than 125 industry representatives from over 50 groups, who expressed interest in work immersion and in co-designing programs with schools.
“Ultimately, the goal of strengthening senior high school and the qualification system is not simply to improve employability,” Aldaba said, “it is to give young Filipinos credible pathways from learning to skills to qualifications to productive work, and from that first job to further learning, career progression, and upward mobility.”
PHINMA University of Iloilo Executive Vice President Ofelia Odilao-Bisnar provided examples of how such partnerships can create direct pathways from education to employment, including scholarships, hands-on training, licensure preparation, internships, and employment.
She also cited collaborations with information technology companies to identify skills requirements and develop micro-credentials.
The broader challenge, however, is turning partnerships into concrete action, Philippine Competition Commission Chairperson Atty. Michael Aguinaldo said.
“There has to be a will to actually do it,” Aguinaldo said.
“And then you have to find those areas where you can really cooperate. It's not enough [to sign] an MOU or MOA. You really have to have some kind of action plan where it can move forward,” Aguinaldo added.
The same implementation challenge emerged in health care. Dr. Alfred Philip De Dios, Vice President of the Quality Assurance Group of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), said the pandemic showed that the government cannot deliver quality health care on its own.
“Government cannot do it alone,” De Dios said, adding that PhilHealth needed to work with the private sector to deliver effective and quality health care.
PhilHealth receives around 7 million claims annually, while each regional office has fewer than 50 evaluators.
De Dios said the agency has a backlog in claims assessment and is exploring the use of artificial intelligence to help evaluate claims, assess standards of care, and detect fraud, waste, and abuse.
“We're looking at, well, starting off with a simple AI program to address the backlogs,” he said.
For Dr. Alexis Antoniades, Professor of International Economics at Georgetown University in Qatar, making investments count also requires the government to evaluate whether programs are actually working.
“We need to start with data-driven policies, we need to do some impact assessments, see what works, what doesn't work, set KPIs, and then cut the programs that don't work,” Antoniades said.
He also said responsibility for preparing workers for technological change should not rest solely with the government, noting that businesses also have a role in using AI to improve productivity and maintain competitiveness.
Meanwhile, Jose Enrique Perez de Tagle, Executive Director of the Air Carriers Association of the Philippines, stressed the importance of long-term planning for investments and workforce development, particularly in an industry vulnerable to external shocks.
“As dialogue partners with government, we have to remind them of the importance of long-term planning,” Perez de Tagle said.
The closing plenary brought together perspectives from government, education, health, business, competition, aviation, and academe on how institutions can translate investments and policy commitments into measurable and sustained outcomes.
The 12th APPC marked the culmination of the Development Policy Research Month led by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS).
Catch the playback of the 12th APPC here: https://bit.ly/pidslive091726. ### — RTG
