Train in accordance with labour force needs – TVET Director urges

- calls for more involvement of industries

August 20, 2014, By KNews, Filed Under News, Source - Kaieteur News

Work force training must be done in accordance with the evident needs of the labour market.  This assertion was made yesterday by Director of Council for Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET), Mr Sydney Walters, as he shared his conviction that “we might very well be involved in over-training in some areas and under-training in others.”

TVET Council Director, Sydney Walters

The Director noted that “even if everything that is required for training is in place and the graduates are competent and equipped with employability skills, placement for those who were trained in those occupational areas that are at saturation points will be difficult…”

Walters therefore expressed the need for stakeholders to direct keen attention on such situations in the labour force.

The TVET Director’s remarks were forthcoming even as he addressed a seminar of key industry stakeholders held at the Kingston, Georgetown, National Centre for Education Resource Development.

The interactive forum saw Walters stressing the need for more involvement from industries to sustain TVET.

He was even candid in informing the gathering that in the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean, Guyana is perhaps the only territory void of systems employed for the financing of TVET on a national basis.

Whether through some form of industrial training levy or system endowment, Walters informed that there are some countries that embrace a system whereby, individual industries make contributions to the funding of TVET, a scheme that Guyana should be directing focus. “That is something that we have to look at…” the TVET Director insisted as he disclosed that Jamaica has had such a system in place for quite a number of years as does Barbados.

Trinidad, on the other hand, has a different but equally efficient system in place, Walters said, as he named a few other countries including Venezuela, Brazil and Costa Rica with TVET support systems in place.

“What it does is to enable the cost for training wherever it happens to be borne by those agencies that do not make such a contribution,” said Walters, as he pointed out that what often obtains in Guyana is that persons trained by the agencies involved in TVET are often “snatched away” by other agencies.

“In situations like that if we had an industrial training levy, the cost would be spread across the industries and therefore it is borne equally.”

Continuing his deliberations on matters concerning TVET, Walters informed that the Council is very much aware that related programmes must satisfy the needs of employers and the individual. And the needs of the individual, according to him, are related to those people who are underemployed, unemployed, and those who have terminated their formal education prematurely, as well as those who are differently-able.

As such, Walters insisted that TVET programmes must satisfy the needs of the nation.

He pointed out that labour market statistical data is very useful in informing TVET policymakers and career guidance officers among others of the occupational areas where there are acute shortages of skilled manpower as well as those occupational areas where there is over-training.  “It also informs us of new occupational areas that are emerging,” said Walters as he highlighted that the focus of the forum was on encouraging training for employment.

He underscored too, that since the curriculum that is being used to meet training for employment is competence based, it must have the involvement of industries.

Consequently, three major areas of collaboration are curriculum development; verification of the assessment of students’ progress by external verifiers who are practicing craftsmen and technicians from industries; and the supplying of labour market information.

Source -- http://www.kaieteurnewsonline....tvet-director-urges/