TVET education key

While Barbados has embraced technical and vocational education, more still needs to be done so as to ensure that those desirous of achieving such qualifications, have access to the highest levels of study available internationally.

So says Executive Director of the TVET Council, Henderson Eastmond. His comments came while delivering remarks at the recent media launch of the 2019 National Career Showcase held in the conference room of the Ministry of Education, Technological and Vocational Training. He also spoke of Barbados’ participation in the 44th WorldSkills Competition in Abu Dhabi in 2017 and the challenges encountered there.

“Technology is a challenge; we have to expose our people to the latest technology. Then the curriculum, most of those people coming to compete at WorldSkills were operating at level 3 and above. Our major technical institutions are still mostly at level 2, so there is a curriculum gap,” he stated.

Eastmond, noting that the TVET Council is at the vanguard of influencing policy to effect the changes that are required, revealed that within a couple weeks’ time, the Council intends to travel to Jamaica to see first-hand the various programmes at the Associate and Bachelor’s Degree levels, to see how we here can raise our standards.

“In some territories, they have introduced TVET education right from primary up. Jamaica did it in a strategy, other countries have transformed their economy and they have done it through transforming the education system. That is something that we have to do and a heavy part of it is the infusion of technical education, high level technical education from primary right up, with a proper tertiary system. And the other side is that we have to look at how we operate both in the private and public sectors, so we have to reform, especially our civil service, how we operate, to get more productivity,” he added.

Additionally, the TVET Council head indicated that efforts have to be made to further develop the career paths locally in relation to technical and vocational courses of study.

“We have to finish build the career path on the technical side so that the parents especially can see the career path and in our marketing we have to be able to show them numerically how much money people make when they are in these industrial professions as opposed to the academic professions. Some people make a lot of money, it is a secret. So when parents and students see the career path and they understand how good you can do in those professions, it is then that it will help us make that major shift towards TVET,” he said. (JRT)