TVET jOURNAL

The History of Plumbing

2011-10-20T19:50:00.000-07:00

I have never thought of this topic but we all know how essential plumbing is to our lives. Its history is really interesting and an enjoyable read not just for would be plumbers but for TVET educators as well. I recommend you go to this article on the History of Plumbing.

TVET- Technology that Works

2010-11-19T23:31:00.000-08:00

The Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training has put up a booth at the Cambodia Water Festival Trade Fair to showcase what technical and vocational education -TVET- does for Cambodia's development.

Here are 2 Cambodia made products in rice technology: Rice dryer and Rice polisher.

There are information and products on post harvest technology. Interested to do something about your produce? Visit these TVET institutions: National Polytechnic Institute of Cambodia, Polytechnic Institute of Battambang, Kampot Polytechnic Institute and Siem Reap Provincial Training Center.

TVET-Technology that Works

2010-11-18T21:28:00.000-08:00

TVET-Technology that Works is the theme of the booth of the Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training at the trade fair in the 2010 Water Festival of Cambodia. Located in Koh Pich or Diamond island, the trade fair is going to be from today, November 19 - 22, 2010. The provincial training insitutions and polytechnics will promote awareness on technical and vocational education as well as sell the products from the communes trained under the ADB-Japan Fund for Poverty Alleviation Post Harvest and Skills Bridging Project.

The products will include chips from local produce, soy milk and pickles. Look for their booth when you visit the trade fair.

The Impact of Cultural Norms on TVET

2010-11-15T22:10:00.000-08:00

TVET’s tendency to shun academic research has led to a dearth of knowledge on the impact of cultural norms in TVET development. What do people think about TVET? Is it better to have an unemployed lawyer as a son than an employed construction supervisor? Is it better to have an daughter earning almost nothing as a teacher or working for international wages in a factory as a electronics technician?

REINVENTING THE GOVERNMENT TECHNICAL COLLEGE

2010-09-07T19:49:00.000-07:00

A DIRECTIVE FOR CHANGE

In many countries, government technical colleges and training institutions are being restructured to meet the demands of the new economy. The requirement is much more than simply adding an IT section or a new programme in automated manufacturing. In fact, the whole environment in which these institutions have worked is changing rapidly and curriculum is just one component of these changes.

Originally, many of these Colleges and Polytechnics were established to serve the needs of government and state-owned industry for semi-skilled workers. In many cases they quickly became havens for students that could not gain entrance to local universities. They were backwaters that really did not fit into Ministries of Education, which were run by Academics with little idea of the world outside of graduate schools and government offices.

Today, as governments downsize, sell off state enterprises and comply with WTO regulations and IMF “suggestions”, these Colleges and Polytechnics are being asked to become part of the real economy and to meet the needs of employers for technicians and highly skilled workers. With national economic futures being increasingly dependent on the skills of the workforce, the pressure to meet employers needs is becoming inexorable. In short, after being micro-managed by government for decades as part of social policy, the technical colleges are being pushed into the new rhetoric to be “demand driven and market responsive” components of micro economic policy. These shifts in public policy are leading to upheavals in every aspect of Technical College operations, from student services to marketing to curriculum to financing. Linking Colleges to the market for training and forcing them to become responsive institutions is a total change in direction.

The transition in response to shifts in public policy is one of the most complex evolutions that institutions can make. Needless to say, a clear strategy is required by government and the institutions if the redirection is not to end in demoralized and marginalized Colleges.

With little or no money to manage the shifts and a priority in the provision of basic education not technical education for most loans and donor agency funding, governments are often unclear on how to plan the transition. Even more a mystery is how to fund the new institutions once the changes have been made. In fact some International Financial Institution strategists have recommended that Government simply get out of the TVET business as it is beyond government funding and competence. This blog is an attempt to help governments and institutions develop a game plan for the new entrepreneurial College of Technology. It attempts to give a framework for a transition plan for moving to demand driven, market responsive Technical colleges and Polytechnics.

There is a Difference

Before we start, let’s get all our cards on the table. Our basic premise is that TEVT (Technical Education and Vocational Training) is fundamentally different from academic education. TEVT is driven by the market place for skills which is in turn, driven by technological change. These forces along with legislative change (environment concerns etc.) affect employer requirements.

TEVT is driven by:
· the needs of young people for jobs,
· employers needs for an expanded workforce and
· the needs of employees for updated technological and administrative skills.

Conversely, academic education is driven by the more general needs of society for literate, well-informed citizens and the development and maintenance of culture.
Academic education is driven by:
· the entry requirements of the next academic level,
· the perceived social value of a University Degree and
· the general curiosity that marks us as humans.

To make a sweeping generalization, TEVT is basically part of micro-economic policy while academic education is substantially locked into social and cultural policy. They are both important, but they are different .

The recent trend for Universities to become skills biased has begun to blur some of these distinctions. Applied Degrees, post graduate diplomas in IT etc, BA’s in Hotel Administration have added to the “vocationalization” that engineering first brought in and then in much of the developing world, abandoned as it sought acceptance in the academic community. Interestingly, some Technical Colleges are “academizing” as social pressure forces them to become less hands- on and more liberal arts biased. This process of “academic creep” seems almost inevitable as institutions pursue the status of the institutions from which their teachers graduated!

As the following diagram shows, traditional education prepares students for the next level of learning. The entire focus is on the triumph of academe: the PhD. The system is designed to self replicate so that the majority of theses PhD’s will seek jobs in Education. Those that leave the system early are in some sense drop-outs, whether this happens after 5 years of schooling or 15.

TE and VT Are Different from Each Other

The next step is to understand that technical education is quite different from vocational training!

TEVT is seen as welding, hairdressing, automotive repair, secretarial work and such activities. And while the “VT” element of TEVT includes these, the “TE” component relates more to mechanical design, computer systems management, bio-medical technology and IT. Modern Technicians need the same intellectual “horsepower” as other professionals and societies that do not recognize this will have a desperate time in competing in the world marketplace.

As noted, most TEVT systems are managed by academics, as part of the general education system. Thus TEVT must often fit into the same policy framework as primary/secondary schools and state universities. And that almost never works! Other jurisdictions move TEVT over to a Ministry of Labour. That makes some sense for the Vocational Training component but it is often a disaster for the development of TE as an intellectual as well as physical activity.

Traditionally, TEVT has been seen as being designed for those who cannot “make it” in the academic stream. As the planner of educational systems most often saw the PhD and a
professorship as the logical end point of formal learning, any one not interested or capable of achieving this level was a type of drop out.

As can readily be seen, the purpose of TEVT is to achieve employment. While life long learning is a necessity, much of this will be done while individuals are fully employed. Managing the Employer centred System within a framework controlled by “Academics”, ensures that it will be misunderstood and generally marginalized as a place fitted only for drop outs and the dull.

Although this was never a good policy, it is disastrous today. Yet the majority of senior administrators of TEVT systems in Ministries of Education value graduate degrees among TEVT teachers more than hands on experience in business and industry and value transfers to university for graduates rather than linking with jobs. Hence in some developing countries, lawyers and engineers outnumber Technicians 3 to 1 while in other countries, University graduates are registering in full and part time technician training so that they can find work. While undergraduate degrees are not less valuable to an economy than Technician diplomas, it is difficult to sustain an argument that they are worth more.

Generally, in this paper, the focus is on TE and not VT. Vocational training is important, but it requires different students, different course structures and has different employment outcomes from technician (technical) education. In some ways, VT is an anchor on technician institutions, reducing their visibility as part of post school/post secondary education. Without the prestige of being post-secondary, it is extremely difficult for Technical Colleges to be effective in the training market place. Yet, if they are seen as primarily “vocational” then the Colleges accept students with 10 or even 8 years of schooling and
operate as technical secondary schools. No wonder they have so little prestige. No wonder their graduates cannot meet the international standards for technicians!

Linking With the Real World

Academics quite properly identify standards and exit levels in and for academic education. Their concern is that graduates of any one level meet the entry standards of the next level up. However, the historical need to protect and separate professors and institutions from the communities in which they live leaves most academic administrators unprepared for managing systems that must become part of the employment community they serve.

TEVT, with its need for powerful linkages to the employment community, is the opposite of the traditional academic system. Furthermore, in TEVT, curriculum (usually competency based) and the standards used to assess curriculum mastery, must reflect the continually changing needs of employers or the marketplace for self -employed entrepreneurs. Textbook-based academic standards are irrelevant in a context of employer needs. Yet today many academic-directed TEVT systems have central written tests as the primary or even exclusive measurement of success. On the one hand, with no standards there is likely to be inadequate performance in the institutions. On the other hand, if the standards are measured only by paper tests, the entire system will be twisted to meet academic criteria rather than performance standards. Letting the client set and participate in measuring the standard is a useful antidote to this problem.

Who is the Client?

In some jurisdictions, Ministries of Economic Development now have the primary role in supervising employment preparatory education including Technician education. This reflects their responsibilities for micro-economic policy, of which a skilled workforce is a key element. Implicit in this is a recognition that the client must play a central role and that private-sector employers are the primary client of job preparatory education. This does not diminish the importance of the student as a client. Rather it accepts that the students’ objective is employment.

Thus meeting employer standards is the student’s priority too. This does not mean that Ministries of Education by definition are incapable of managing TEVT systems. It simply suggests that a special team is needed if an “academic” Ministry is to be effective in this area.

If we do not know who the client is, we will end up serving nobody. The key here is in relating TE to the employers’ expressed needs. The possibilities of doing this in a nationally controlled academic programme are not good. Local industries create jobs. Local employers know the skills that they need or will need (not perfectly of course). Local institutions can respond to these employers’ needs if they have both the marketing skills and the local freedom to respond. There is little evidence that national labour market data systems contribute much to linking training to real jobs.

The Client Gives Direction

Employers need to have the same influence over graduate skills in technical and Technician education that medical doctors have over medical education or engineers over engineering schools or pilots over flight training. If the intent is to train for employment, employers and unions must be made partners in the process. By creating technician programmes that do this, economies accelerate the evolution of their TE institutions into demand driven, market responsive partners in long term human resources development.

What System?

There is always more than one pathway to reach a goal. This has a public institution bias not because institutional education is the only way to train technicians, but because the problem it addresses is the issue of the transition of existing institutions. There are other models based on in-industry training or private institution education that work well and deserve attention. A visit to Chile will show an effective system that sidesteps Government completely. It shows that financing TEVT is quite different from providing TEVT!

Beyond this, of course, is the idea that systems developed in one country can easily fit in countries with dramatically different predominant cultures. How many of us have watched the attempts to transfer models from highly disciplined technologically oriented countries to countries with totally different histories and challenges! Let’s be realistic. The world is a buffet of working models. Take the bits and pieces that might fit into you own environment and use those as influences on the transition.

Systems are never static. TVET is generally seen as evolving from a supply driven, academic activity to a responsive, competency based system. The following grid displays some of the characteristics that are seen as positive. Most systems are on a journey from moving towards the desired characteristics.

Summary

As has been noted, employment centered education is expensive. By its nature, TEVT is hands on; that is students learn by doing as well as listening. Learning to play a piano requires that the student actually play the instrument to master the skills. Talking about the piano leads to an appreciation of the theory of the instrument but the graduate of such a programme will be useless to a symphony orchestra. In much the same way, an electrical Technician graduate who has only listened to teachers talk about electrical technology will be of no use to industry. Thus there must be equipment on which students can develop their ideas and the equipment is costly.

Educators have traditionally seen their efforts as being government directed. TEVT is completely tied to economic development and must respond to quite different stimuli than academic education. The employer is the client, and unless the government is hiring all the graduates, the government it is the private-sector employers who must have the primary influence on the system! TEVT is different. It must be managed differently, funded differently and measured differently.

A More Effective Role for Government in TVET

2009-09-22T18:02:00.000-07:00

Government usually plays a primary role in directly managing the delivery of core social services such as health, education, social welfare and access programs. As governments downsize, they may look for multiple suppliers and providers of services in areas in which partnership participation is possible. As an example, in the Philippines, 80% of University education and of TVET is provided by the private sector. Most governments are still in a transition from their historic role of exclusive TVET provision to being only one of several financial partners in preparation for employment.

Beyond basic life skills and perhaps directly supporting institutions in remote areas, TVET is a part of economic policy and competitiveness and not primarily part of social policy. Few governments (if any) can afford to fund a comprehensive national TVET strategy alone. As an example, in some jurisdictions there is a gradual growth of learner participation in financing TVET through a significant growth in tuition fees. In other countries, enterprise financial participation has expanded significantly. In yet others, social contracts among labour, employers and the state, create cost sharing.

Whatever the approach, it is clear that in employment preparation, there are multiple direct beneficiaries and beneficiary participation in financing is appropriate. Investors might be government, employers, individual learners, families of the learners and NGOs with specific equity mandates. Each must be convinced of their role and then given a chance to participate.

An effective quality check in technical education is whether or not beneficiaries are willing to pay for their training. If there is a substantial pay back on their investment, experience suggests that participation will be enthusiastic.

For more TVET articles, got to http://www.tvetjournal.com/

6 Proven Steps to TVET Cost Recovery

2009-09-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

1. Identify a new cost recovery business idea for your institution based on your assessment of what the market may want. Do not start with what your institution can do. That comes later.

2. Who will buy your service or product? Describe your potential customer (age, education, income, occupation, life style, needs, wants, location, etc.). Look at the specific person in the company who you will deal with if it is a corporate client. If you cannot answer this one, find a different service or product!

3. List and assess the competition. Who is meeting this need now?

4. Identify, in detail, three competitive advantages you have over the competition. Why is your service better?

5. Identify all costs for providing the service or product including raw materials, transportation, marketing, overhead, incentives for staff, equipment replacement over time, and energy costs.

6. Determine the price you must charge for the product or service based on your analysis of costs, your competitors’ prices and at least a 25% excess of revenue over expense.

http://www.tvetjournal.com/

TVET and Cost Recovery

2009-09-20T21:44:00.000-07:00

How did TVET get into the position that forces administrators of government funded institutions to learn the business skills of cost recovery and take a dynamic leadership role? Basically, most governments simply cannot afford the total cost of trade and technician institutions for the future. TVET is VERY expensive. Allowing institutions to simply decay is the usual result of government insistence on control. Cost recovery is the most common alternative to decay.

To recover costs, institutions must respond to the needs of the locality in which they are situated. Centralized systems are less likely to create this ability to respond at the local level. Understanding decentralization and devolution is vital and having the confidence and courage to support giving up some control is the key. Unless local institutional leaders have the skills to steer their institution in a whole new direction and have freedom to respond to the market for skills, the decay of public sector TVET institutions will result.

http://www.tvetjournal.com/

A National TVET Development Strategy

2009-09-19T22:39:00.000-07:00

Thinking of developing a national TVET development strategy?

Planners identify Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) as a national system of skills development that is directed at employment and self employment. It focuses on: (i) the demand of Enterprise for a skilled workforce, (ii) the needs of young people for decent jobs, (iii) the needs of the workforce for further skills development to match new technology and (iv) the needs of the poor for basic skills to improve family income.

The plan in many countries is to have three major TVET delivery mechanisms to meet these demands and needs:

(i) a TVET Colleges and Polytechnics system to give school completers at grades 8, 10 and 12 the skills required by employers and to provide part time training to the existing workforce to improve skills for better jobs and to keep up with technological change. (ii) Community based livelihood skills training usually supported by Government but delivered by private sector trainers with community skills, (iii) the school system, preparing young people with the attitudes, behaviors and employability skills to begin employment training on completion of school.

To develop a national TVET development strategy, first, review (i) the current policy and institutional environment for TVET in your country, (ii) the requirements of each of the three delivery mechanisms (iii) the institutional arrangements that have proven to be most effective and efficient in supporting those delivery mechanisms in regional countries and (iv) alternate means of reducing TVET cost to Government.

http://www.tvetjournal.com/