TVET education crucial to Ghana’s transformation – Mahama

Former president John Mahama says he will build on the great strides his previous administration made towards revamping and repositioning Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET).

Speaking at the launch of the 27th Annual Residential Delegates Congress of the Ghana Union of Technical Students (GNUTS) in Kumasi, the flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) who is leading the NDC to the 2020 elections said he will move to rebrand TVET and make it more attractive to students.

“It is my intention, in the future government that I will head, to rebrand TVET into an alternative of first choice rather than the wretched path that students are compelled to take when all other doors are closed to them”, President Mahama noted.

Continuing, Mr. Mahama said his administration will continue to clear the pathway, so that the path toward technical and vocational education training from the basic level, through the secondary level, to the tertiary level, “will be an alternative of first choice and not an alternative of rejected students”, adding “I daresay that we need our brightest and best to take the path of technical education, if we are to transform this country.”

The John Mahama administration is credited for commencing the repositioning of TVET through strategic resourcing and capacity building.

That process led among others to retooling a number technical institutes and the conversion of polytechnics into technical universities.

The NDC’s idea to turn polytechnics into technical universities, he stated, was for very good reasons.

“It was about taking education, especially technical & vocational education seriously- making it an anchor of national development and an instrument of national transformation”.

Mr. Mahama also explained that the conversion of polytechnics into technical universities was to help advance more vigorously, a process of repositioning them as strategic institutions that train personnel with high level technical skills in the TVET domain, towards the country’s economic and national development agenda.

The NDC Flagbearer described the journey from HND to BTech as unnecessary, too long and unreasonably frustrating.

According to him, it was a real struggle for students to gain admission into the few higher education institutions, which offered the HND holder the opportunity for a top up to upgrade their qualifications into a degree.