Ghana : As part of efforts to transform the country’s Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET), to meet the needs of industries, the government has decided to realign all aspects of TVET provision under the Ministry of Education.
The move is to strengthen, improve and revitalize the skills development sector in the country to contribute meaningfully to industrial development and economic growth through the development of employable skills, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, Minister for Education said.
He was speaking at a validation workshop organised by the Ministry in collaboration with the Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET) to validate a five-year strategic plan for TVET transformation in Ghana.
Dr Prempeh said government’s decision was based on the recognition of the fact that TVET was critical to the building of a skilled workforce for rapid agricultural, industrial and economic transformation.
He said the TVET landscape in the country was very fragmented with negative implications, which affected system governance, development and coordination of TVET for efficiency, quality and relevance.
He noted that currently the Public TVET Providers were under about 15 to 18 different Ministries, in addition with a large number of registered and unregistered private training providers, leading to lack of quality supervision and coordination of the system.
The Minister said no country could developed and become industrialized without mainstreaming skills development, adding, the case of many European countries led by Germany and those of South Eastern Asia buttress the critical role skills acquisition placed in any industrial revolution, and Ghana could not be an exception.
“Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) has a normal potential for moving Ghana’s economic forward. Unfortunately, there is so much left to be done to make TVET and skill development the driving force of Ghana’s economic growth,” he said.
Dr Prempeh therefore called for the development of a functional TVET and skills development systems to improve the productivity and competitiveness of the skilled workforce and raised the income-earning capacity of low income groups. That, he said, could be achieved through the provision of quality-oriented, industry-focused, competency-based training programmes as well as the provision of other complementary services.
He said government’s agenda of reactivating the original aim of linking Technical/ Vocational Institutions to Technical Universities to refocus on Technical Education and positioned them to be at the forefront of the “One District, One Factory” policy and other interventions like mainstreaming agriculture in TVET.
Mr Enoch Hemans Cobbinah, Chief Director, Ministry of Education, said over the decades various attempts were made to rebrand TVET to make them more efficient but all had come to null due to uncoordinated and fragmented efforts by TVET institutions. He expressed the hope that the validation workshop would holistically look at the transformation of TVET to enhance the future prospects of the country.
“Our task is to look at how to bring the informal TVET sector to formal TVET sector,” he added and expressed his gratitude to GIZ for their continuous support.
Key among the numerous problems confronting TVET in Ghana include poor linkage between training institution and industry; deeply fragmented landscape and lack of coordination among multiple TVET delivery agencies; multiplicity of standards, testing and certifications.
Others are low quality of instruction due to inadequate instructor training and lack of instructional support and TVET infrastructure; an informal TVET system that has been neglected and detached from the formal sector, poor public perception of TVET, which is seen as good for only academically weak students.
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