Support for Skills development should go beyond rhetoric

Professor Goski Alarbi, an academician, says the rhetoric of improving skills development through Technical Vocation Education and Training (TVET) must be backed by the requisite investment and commitment.

The Consulting President of Laweh University observed that despite the rhetoric of prioritising TVET, the sector still lacked the needed support compared to other areas of tertiary education in the country.

She was speaking at the maiden Accra Technical University (ATU) colloquium on the theme, “Strategic Leadership for Maximum Impact in a Secured Cyber Space.’’
“To accelerate the growth, the focus of the country must be on skill development; it should not be simply rhetorical that we keep saying that we believe in skill development yet we are not giving it the necessary support,” she said.

While commending the Government for interventions and reforms within the TVET sector over the years, she called for calculated efforts to change the general perception about TVET.

Prof. Alarbi also bemoaned the over emphasis on certificate acquisition in tertiary education which she said had for some time deprived students the requisite skill to build the country, contributing to graduate unemployment.

“There is too much emphasis on qualification and certification when in actual fact we need skills that can be put directly to use after school,” she said.

Mr. Peter Antwi Boasiako, Deputy Director Commission for TVET, said the Government understood the relevance of TVET to the development of the country.
He noted that neglecting TVET equated to neglecting the development of the country since the sector was behind almost all technological innovation and advancement within the economy.

He disclosed that the Government had invested close to GHS19 billion in the sector that had witnessed major reforms through the establishment of agencies to regulate TVET and the retooling of existing technical universities with state-of –the-art equipment for training.
Mr Boasiako said it was about time technical universities paid more attention to their commercial viability to enable them to address their resource mobilisation challenges.