National Development through Vocational Education
Education is a significant dimension aspect to the development of a country. It is one of the main objectives of the educations. Higher education is to prepare students to pursue different careers in a country. University education is recognized as the core of higher education. Therefore, universities are supposed to be social institutions, which provide facilities for higher intellectual needs of a community as regards both academic knowledge and professional training.
Individuals having appropriate knowledge, skills and competencies are the key basic requirement of today for sustainable social and economic development. Vocational and technical education is the most important factor to determine the social and economic development of the countries. A vocational and technical education, which is planned in line with global developments, play an active role in achieving human-oriented development.
The Sri Lanka vocational education and training sector has been the subject of innumerable studies, reports, plans, and strategies. Few, however, have tackled its financing. One reason for this is that estimating how much funding is channeled to vocational education and training activities is not easy. Vocational education and training institutions serve a variety of clients, from school leavers to mid-career employees, and course formats are organized to suit different needs. Many government entities are responsible for vocational education and training activities; assignment of the responsibilities changes whenever government portfolios are reshuffled, and expenditures on technical training activities are often not recorded as a separate line item. Most private vocational education and training is conducted outside the formal sector, and when nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) offer vocational education and training, their reporting methods are not always uniform.
Vocational Education Institutes and Beneficiaries
In Sri Lanka, mainly few of institutes delivering vocational education in all the district. Particularly Department of Technical Education & Training (DTET), VTA, NAITA, NYSC conducting courses and issuing National Vocation Qualification (NVQ) certificate to those students. According to the Labour market information bulletin report (2019) of TVEC reported 176080 students finished their vocational programmes and only 78007 NVQ certificate issued by TVEC. There is a big gap between the vocational programme and obtain NVQ certificates among those students.
Recruitments and completions in selected public sector organizations in 2019.
There is a big gap between recruitment and completions. Unfortunately, more than 30% of students fail to complete their programmes every year. This was a very serious issue in the vocational education sector.
Vocational Training and unemployment
According to the central bank report (2019), the unemployment rate is 4.8% it was increased by 0.4% from 2018. The TVEC reporting that vocational institutes produce more skilled persons to the job market. But the fact showing the negative relationship.
TVEC report mentioning that 28.2% of the trained vocational education people haven’t job in this country. Unfortunately every year more than 150000 people trained in the vocational sector. When we look at these two scenarios are very conflict in the current situation.
What’s the solution to the current situation?
In the common view, there is a big mismatch between the vocational programmes and labour demand. The government need to revise the system of vocational education and also institutional policy regarding vocational education. The government and other organizations join the hands with those vocational sector students to encourage them to become an entrepreneur in their respective field. The institutes need to analysis the job market before recruiting the students to their programmes and also they need to place those students in the job placement after the training programmes. The institute must be considered on the right student for the right vocational education programme and this is the big responsibility for the institute.
“We join together and built our country.”
Sothinathan Sangjeli
Associate Member of CPM Sri Lanka
Development Officer
Technical College – Batticaloa