Gov’t To Set Up Council

Government will establish a Council for Technical, Vocational and Educational Training (COTVET) by the end of this year to guide policy makers and sensitize the public on its new focus on education.

This is to entrench the importance government attaches to vocational and technical education in the new education policy, so graduates of the subjects would be partners in the country's accelerated growth.

The Central Regional Minister, Nana Ato Arthur made this known at the 28th Annual Conference of Association of Heads of Catholic Higher Institutions at Cape Coast.

It was on the theme, “The New Education Reform, Producing A Ghanaian With A New Mentality-The TVET Factor.”

The Minister stated that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government was ready to place Ghanaians at the centre of development in spite of challenges in resource mobilization.

According him, it was in view of this that the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy II was set up to ensure that the nation produced knowledgeable, well trained and healthy population with adequate capacity to support accelerated economic growth and poverty reduction.

He expressed concern about the perception that it was only students who are not good academically that attended vocational and technical schools, adding that government was putting measures in place to expand infrastructure in vocational and technical institutions in the country.

“Government also understands the importance of vocational and technical education towards the accelerated growth of the country, hence its decision to establish COTVET.”

He revealed that the National Youth and Employment Programme (NYEP) has registered a total of over 174,670 people in the country since its inception in 2006, adding that out of the number, over 78,195, representing 45 percent were employed in 2006 alone.

In his keynote address, the Director for the Institute of Educational Planning and Administration at the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Dr. Albert L. Dare, hinted that 60 percent of Junior High School (JHS) leavers failed to gain admission into Senior High Schools (SHS) while the universities could absorb only 10 percent of any batch of SHS leavers. He therefore called for modernization and expansion of Technical and Vocational Institutions to reduce the threat, and emphasized the need for the public to change their perception about Technical, Vocational Education Training (TVET).

The Archbishop of Cape Coast, Peter Cardinal Kojo Appiah Turkson, who chaired the function, called on the government to invest more in TVET.

From Sarah Afful, Cape Coast