|
|
 |
 |
| Sunday, 25 January 2004 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
No more 'failures?' *** "Professionals for the Nation" recently held a multi-disciplinary seminar at the University of Peradeniya. Below is an edited version of the address by Prof. H. Kotagama, Chairman, Vocational Training Authority of Sri Lanka on his vision and plans for vocational training, in dealing with the large numbers of students who are left out of the university system. *** Throughout my career, I have been working with 'failures'. My mission has been to try and provide fairness to 'failures' as an environmental economist and also as the Chairman of the Vocational Training Authority. This subject of environmental economics is rather a new subject, developed in the past two decades, and it is a reaction to the realisation that the environmental conservation is important and necessary for the substance of humanity. You are aware that, the economic system we are adopting today in our country very prominently, is a market economic system with a little bit of tinkering here and there for the sake of equity. In a market economic system, it is the market that takes all decisions with respect to what we should be producing and when, what and how we should use resources and so forth. 'Failures' As anyone of you, I also came to know what the Vocational Authority was only when I was appointed as the Chairman of this Authority. What is this Vocational Training Authority? Vocational Training Authority is justifying on government 'failures' in education. We all know our straight-line education system is focused on two vocations, i.e. medicine and engineering. From the low kindergarten onwards the child focuses only on two vocations i.e. medicine and engineering. Any other would be considered a 'failure'. With this focus we have two main exams i.e. O/Ls and A/Ls. The number that get into the universities now is 12,000. This number is less than 2% or 1.8% to be exact from the total. 98% fail, and do we care about them ? If you read today's newspapers, what would be the headlines, not very good things about universities but very unfortunate events such as a vice-chancellor being thrown out. The whole society is focused upon the universities for whatever reason. Do we discuss about the 98% who fail out of the formal education system anywhere ? Very rare. I have not heard any such discussions but they are a large part of our society. They are called the 'failures'. We appreciate only those who were succeed. The 'failures' are ignored. The Vocational Training Authority cares for the 'failures' of the formal education. Of those who enter the university a large majority are also unproductive and unemployed. Nearly 28,000 are today unemployed and holding banners around the country. Present education system In the present education system we have the ladder from low-kindergarten upto year 11 and we have the O/Ls, and A/Ls, the two exit points. From those exit points they join the technical education, vocational training or apprenticeship training. That is the possibility. But beyond that there is a red line, a barrier. They would get stuck there. They would not get opportunities to further educate themselves even if they want to or even if they realise that they could do so. That is our system. But the selected few, just 2%, gets the most opportunities to get to the top, that is the Universities, higher Technical Colleges, and a few professional institutes. That is what we are. Well, the Regaining Sri Lanka private sector document focuses on improving life-long opportunities for education. And I am happy to say I was able to push this concept in policy forums. We discussed about possibilities of laddering up, vertically creeping into the formal education system if one wishes. We are also looking at what is referred to now in the policy jargon as PPP (Public - Private Partnership). We clearly realize that the public sector itself cannot provide education, and hence we are looking for various possibilities for building up partnerships with the private sector. Much of our unemployment is because of the poor quality of our education and that is because they don't relate to the economics. I remember Dr. Arulprakasam once saying that learning physics, chemistry and botany is of no use if one fails at the point of A/Ls. Now there is a lot of focus on improving relevance and quality of education, within the university system as well as outside in the arena that I am working, i.e. vocational education. We are trying to give enough space and opportunity for anyone interested and keen to learn. Numerous arrows of possibilities are created through the concept of colleges of education. We would be having two types of colleges of education, namely college of education itself or teaching and then the application side of it, colleges of technology. The Vocational Training Authority is under the Ministry of Tertiary Education and Training in which the Minister is Hon. Kabir Hashim. The mission of the Vocation Training Authority is the provision of skills training for the Youth for productive employment towards socioeconomic development of Sri Lanka. Now we take care of that 98% who fell off or failed from the formal system. We provide with them various skills they know what their employment will be. In contrast, after graduation many of our university graduates go off not knowing what they would be doing except perhaps the medical doctors, and that is also now becoming uncertain. In this regard when I give a certificate to a trainee, we also announce the salary that they would get in his or her employment. As most do get employed, I am a happy chairman to award a certificate with employment. That is the difference between the university and what I am doing now. Productive employment We train people for productive employment. This is a new phenomenon, which I have observed and now I am trying to push this into our mission. We are in a market economic system. The nature of the market economic system is that if an industry is not profitable, that would have to close down and move those resources to another. You are aware that some of the garment industries are now closing down. Therefore, we have to re-train these workers and move them to another productive employment. That is important because of the present economic system. This is another policy that I am trying to push into our mission. The Vocation Training Authority is much larger than the whole University system. I did not know it until I took up the responsibility. Now I feel being a Vice-chancellor would be rather easier than managing this. In terms of the physical infrastructure we have 4 National Vocational Training Centers, 3 in Colombo and 1 in Galle. We have 14 District centers spread all over the country, and have 220 special and rural vocational training centers. It is a huge organization with geographical spread. Following is the progress of our vocational training graduates. We have approximately 25,000 qualifying annually and the whole university system doesn't cater to such numbers. The numbers entering our schemes are growing. We are now trying to improve the quality and relevance in the Vocational Training. We are also trying to introduce competency based training i.e. courses focusing on training certain competencies. We can identify those competencies and arrange them in modules. Then, they would not time bound in their training. Identification of competencies and arranging the training in modules allows anyone interested to take-up a module or two to fill in their gaps in their own professions. Although it is a big task, we are gradually introducing competency-based training. First thing in this project would be to change the mindset of trainers, who are used to time bound training. We need special equipment, curricular change, upgrading of vocational training centers with buildings and equipment to succeed in this task. Qualifications Until now we have been locating these training centers in temples etc but this is very difficult as profit sharing has become a problem as a result. We are now building our own training centers, hopefully by the end of this year, we would have completed at least 48 training centers. Billions worth of new equipment have been imported for the vocational training. We are in the process of establishing what is called national vocational qualification system. In our formal education system we have the O/Ls, the A/Ls and University degree etc. But for the vocational center we have no such accepted qualifications and we are developing a certain levels of professional training. Thereafter we shall be introducing quality assurance systems. This is extremely important when we are allowing the private sector, and even for the public sector, to ensure education they provide is of quality. These systems shall assure quality through accreditation etc. I am proud to say that the vocational training sector is far ahead of the university system in terms of introducing such rapid, innovative changes. Computerising We are also working on institutional building and human resources development. We do not have a policy for vocational training similar to our education policy, and we do not have a policy direction for vocational training. We are now working on writing up a policy. We are introducing a management information system. Unlike Peradeniya University, which is geographically confined, the vocational training authority is spread all over the country, that is in terms of national, district and rural centers. If we are to manage these efficiently, we need a good information system. Therefore, we are computerizing the whole system and by the mid of next year this would be done. Social marketing is also very important. To become a mason or a carpenter is considered socially degrading and people say so. They are part of us. If not for the carpenters we would not be seated here but yet we do not consider them with the due dignity. Therefore, we are propagating social marketing that is to implement strategies to improve their social acceptance, which is very important. In resource rationalisation we are far behind. If you look at it from the top, you would see that there are many duplications, and these students themselves get lost in it. We are now trying to rationalise and integrate all these training facilities within a district through a district training plan. Through that we are trying to provide better information for potential trainees and promote better use of the available resources. Sometimes, there are lathe machines in the next building, which belongs to the technical college, but the Vocational training authority would not have access to it for training. That is the nature of these things in this country. We are trying to strengthen the private sector and NGO participation in vocational training. Already some NGOs are involved in providing vocational training but we are trying to encourage them further. We are also trying to give autonomy for 2 technical colleges. IT sector We are also thinking of performance contracting i.e. offering provision of certain services to the private sector where they are efficient. Not all, but where they are efficient. The first would be the IT sector where the private sector is very efficient right now. We also promote what is called Self Employment Promotion initiative. What we do in the vocational training authority is to train them and provide them with a loan maximum of Rs. 500,000/- if they want it. The catch phrase nowadays is IT and we have a program especially for rural youth. We would be having by the end of this month a national center with 100 computers, which would offer one-year certificate course in IT. We not only provide training in specific time bound courses but we are also providing facilities for the rural people to use information technology in terms of learning communication etc. Finally please share my mission in fairness to failures. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
