Dear Editor,
Yesterday, my attention was drawn to a letter published in your Sunday Stabroek Columns, “Talents at Bishop’s should not be used for vocational education”, expressing the writer’s views on vocational education in Guyana. I thank the writer for the opinions shared. I think he has good intent and is welcomed; at least, it directs us in TVET that we have work to do, especially in removing the long, stifling stigma on TVET. I wish to share some thoughts and appreciate your publication of the same. The writer’s view, to an informed mind, can be responded to from different fronts; I will dwell on three of these:
The Ministry of Education policy in TVET, especially in the secondary school system, is data-driven, inclusive and representative of global trends.
The referenced Ministry of Education policy ensures that every secondary student exits secondary school with a dual certificate: the CSEC as we know it and the new Caribbean Vocational Qualification (CVQ), a CXC-issued vocational qualification in secondary schools. This policy is based on several key published research and data. In 2002, UNESCO and ILO published a world-wide study that found that “80% of jobs created around the world are TVET -related” and promoted a new definition to encompass all skills -related nomenclature, including vocational training as TVET – Technical Vocational Education and Training: “Those aspects of educational process involving the study of technologies and related sciences and the acquisition of practical skills, general education, attitudes, understanding and knowledge relating to occupations in various sectors of economic life”.
This rekindled a global movement that ensures that skills training and TVET are necessary for the nation’s development and economic prosperity; hence, it should be given the priorities and focus it deserves. Accordingly, the Caribbean Association of National Training Authorities (CANTA), locally represented by the Council for TVET (CTVET) on April 30, 2012, admonished Caricom member states to re-strategize and rethink TVET, articulating that “the role and positioning of TVET as an economic activity well integrated within the education system must be an imperative for CARICOM’s sustainable development and prosperity”. Subsequently, further actions were taken within the region to ensure that Caricom nations accrue the desired benefits of TVET. Some of these included:
The 2015 Caricom TVET strategy that required member states to ensure that “Upper-secondary curriculum includes training towards labour-market relevant CVQs available to all students and scheduled, resourced, staffed and promoted appropriately.”
In 2017, following its 2012 TVET Policy, the CXC revised all its TVET-related subjects, incorporating the CVQ requirements into the curriculum, including Mechanical Technology, Electrical & Electronics Technology, Agricultural Science, Homec, and Industrial Technology, among others. These are some of the technology subjects, to which the writer refers, written by not only the QC and the Bishops students but by every secondary school student, given their choice or streams.
The latest version of the Caricom Vocational Qualification Framework recently approved by COSHOD, outlined vocational qualifications within the Caribbean to range from Level 1 (Certificate) to Level 8 (Doctoral Degree). Interestingly, the UWI and other Universities around the globe currently offer Master’s and PhD programmes in TVET.
Evidently, the Ministry of Education, fully aware of the current regional and global trend in workforce development, could not continue to advocate and use the old colonial strategy to which the writer referenced. This policy also embodies the Ministry of Education’s inclusivity agenda, ensuring that every Guyanese, regardless of location, can access skill training and receive a CVQ qualification equivalent to that offered at the GTI, which is inherently regionally and internationally bench-marked.
The expressed view of the GTI is, at best, propagating an obsolete and long-abandoned colonial mindset of relegating TVET.
I agree that the GTI is the premier technical institute in Guyana; for argument’s sake, the University of Guyana is also a TVET Institution. I reject in all its ramifications the notion that the GTI and like institutions are not “academically inclined”, as though they do not produce the best. I fail to understand the assertion of shifting the development of the best minds in the nation to areas of less need and less difficulty. As a former staff member of the GTI for over 15 years, five of which was as the Principal of the GTI, it might interest the writer and like minds to know that the GTI, like its counterparts in Canada and other countries, cater for persons at level 1 (supervised workers), level 11 (independent workers) and level 3 (supervisors) and offers technician certificate and diploma programmes in electrical, mechanical, civil/ building engineering, science, lands surveying, commerce, architecture. These are equivalent to what others refer to as Associate Degree or A’ level programmes. Some graduates have become successful lawyers, doctors, engineers, architects, etc. I wonder what is less difficult in engineering, science, and technology taught at the GTI when these entail a detailed understanding of the underpinning technologies and sciences engineers employ to design and build a system. They are also expected to troubleshoot the systems and systematically translate them to the current operating conditions, which in most cases, differ from the design parameters. The GTI offers the possibility to anyone independent of his/her academic status and challenges them to become whoever they want to become in their chosen field.
The Ministry of Education Policy is Strategic
I must proffer that when one looks at the benefits progressive countries accrue from TVET, the available data, especially on the local labour force in Guyana, the Ministry’s decision to introduce skills training options to all its secondary school students must be applauded. Within the last three years, there have been four Labour Market Information Surveys (LMIS) conducted by ILO, the Centre for Small Business Development, the Ministry of Labour and the recent Guyana skills survey commissioned by the Ministry of Education through the World Bank project. One of the reports proposes that given the current trend of graduates from all TVET Post-Secondary Institutions, including the University of Guyana and other tertiary institutions, Guyana will not be in the position to meet its labour demand; an additional 142,000 by 2030 in eleven sectors of the economy. It is therefore expected that the persons exiting secondary schools with their skill certificates can contribute to improving the labour shortage. I conclude with the words of Dr. Olato Sam (May his soul continue to rest in peace) “The Best Minds of Guyana must be in TVET” and his reference to TVET includes both the secondary schools and technical institutes like the GTI.
Sincerely,
Patrick Chinedu Onwuzirike (MSc, MEd)
Director/CEO – Council for TVET