CoLTEK,GSDI sign MoU to enhance Technical, Vocational Education

Two institutions last Thursday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to train more teachers and facilitators in the area of Technical, Vocational Education and Training (TVET).

The two, the Kumasi College of Technology Education (CoLTEK) of the University of Education Winneba (UEW) and the Ghana Skills Development Initiative (GSDI), signed the MoU under the third phase of the GSDI, with the belief that the TVET had the ability to train millions of people for a lifetime career.

The programme is being sponsored by the European Union, the Swiss Government and GIZ of Germany under its Programme for Sustainable Economic Development (PSED).

The occasion was also used to launch cooperation between the two organisations, for the establishment of a working group that would focus on the development of teaching materials and manual, and for in-service Competency-Based Training (CBT) facilitation training.

Relevance

At the signing of the MoU, the Vice Chancellor of UEW, Rev. Fr Prof. Anthony Afful-Broni, underscored the importance of the TVET in the development of the country.

He said through TVET, the critical skills needed for the development of the country would be trained and more people would become self-sufficient and create more jobs in the country.

Prof. Afful-Broni said under the agreement, the CoLTEK would train all the facilitators and teachers of the TVET from all the colleges of education and also develop curricula that would spearhead the promotion of TVET in the country.

He was grateful to the development partners for supporting the university to build the capacity of its personnel to implement the programme in the country.

GSDI

The Team Leader of GSDI, Mr Markus Ehmann, said TVET had the ability to help in the production of quality products that would boost the local economy.

According to him, TVET was the backbone of industries since the industries would have the needed human resource to man them and make them functional.

He said most European countries used TVET as the basis of the development of their economy and was glad that Ghana was moving towards that path.

COTVET

The Executive Director of the Council for Technical and Vocational Education Training (COTVET), Dr Fred Kyei Asamoah, said Ghana was moving away from writing and speaking to thinking and doing and explained that “if learners in our TVET schools will be able to acquire the requisite and competitive skills, they must have the right facilitators who will equip them with the right skills”.

In that regard, he said CoLTEK would have to be well-positioned and resourced to deliver their core mandate to be an apex institution for training facilitators.

He said it was for that reason that COTVET supported the college to establish a centre for Competency Based Training (CBT) and Research.

Dr Asamoah said the council urgently needed the support of CoLTEK to train the required facilitators, assessors, internal and external verifiers to support the council accreditation process and the competency-based implementation as a whole.

About GSDI III

The objective of the third phase of GSDI is to improve the quality of TVET to enhance skills and qualification and provide demand-driven training to targeted groups, especially those in the informal and agricultural sectors such as job-seeking youth, apprentices and workers and owners of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.