Two Ministries blamed for poor TVET performance
An Expert in Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET), Dr Henry Fram Akplu, has accused the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations of sidelining each other when they have access to funds meant for the development of TVET in the country.
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He said the Ministry of Education inadvertently left out all other ministries when allocating funds for the retooling of TVET institutions under the “the Ghana skills for industry project” which was funded by the Agricultural Development Bank.
“All citizens contribute to the GETFund but when it comes to disbursement, TVET institutions outside the Ministry of Education do not get a fair share and in some cases do not get anything at all,” he stated.
“Now a new stream of funding from communication tax has been created to support youth employment. The fund is administered by the Youth Employment Agency (YEA), which is under the Ministry of Employment. Will it be the turn of the Ministry of Employment to also hold the funds to its chest and exclude TVET institutions under the Ministry of Education?” he asked.
He said: “When it comes to TVET delivery, these two ministries were moving in different directions, sometimes they operated as if they belonged to different countries, adding that inter-ministerial conflicts were subtle and covered up to create a picture that all was well.
Dr Fram Akplu said the breakdown of collaboration between these two ministries since 1990 had made it difficult to realise a unified TVET system.
Overlapping and conflicting legal mandates
Dr Fram Akplu also pointed out that aside the frosty relationship between the two ministries, regarding TVET provisions, the Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET), which was set up to produce quality technical manpower for industries, was also faced with overlapping and conflicting legal mandates.
The COTVET law mandates it to oversee all aspects of TVET, including pre-tertiary and tertiary education but there are laws covering tertiary education, notably the National Accreditation Board Law, the National Council for Tertiary Education Law, the Polytechnic Law, and now the Technical Universities Law.
Overdependence on loans and grants
The expert also mentioned the country’s TVET development over depended on loans, grants, and technical assistance from development partners such as the World Bank, The African Development Bank, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Canada, and Japan.
He said over the past two decades, no major intervention had occurred in the TVET sector that was not funded by development partners.
He said about US$ 70 million of loans and grants from development partners were spent to implement the skills development fund but as at now, there was no sustainable impact from the fund.
“We scattered the loans and grants on disjointed projects, few of which can survive in isolation. That was not the way the skills development fund concept in the TVET policy was meant to operate,” he said.