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Learning for Life, Work and the Future Participants’ Papers Page 43 master a skill at his own pace, of course, within a reasonable time. The tests that are presented to the student should not ask for more or less than is stated in the standards. 2.2 Distance education Distance does not need to be a problem when good use is made of information technology. It is possible to use the primary school in a village for distance education: it needs only two or three motivated people and a simple network to connect a classroom to a technical college elsewhere in the country. Technical colleges, with all their resources, should be able to be used as distance education centres. The courses presented through such a medium cannot be too specialised but could deal with simple technical problems and solutions, with safety in and around the house, with the conservation and use of energy, with hygiene, and so on. Internet or intranet facilities could also be used to distribute information to interested students in remote towns and villages. The chat-room is a good example of a way for people to communicate directly with each other. In the case of distance education, a number of people could be connected to one teacher through chat lines. 3. The Curriculum 3.1 The programme of learning We all accept the fact that a curriculum, a programme of learning, is needed for acquiring skills and knowledge in whatever discipline. We must however realise that there are no two people who have exactly the same job, or do things exactly the same way. We only have to take our car to two different workshops, or visit two different physicians, and we will get two different opinions about the problems with our vehicle or the ailment that we suffer. Learning is a process of exercising, and the exercises we do are intended to make us ready for life and work. The exercises someone else does will most probably be different from ours, but they have the same goal. In a high quality learning environment the two sets of exercises will have equal importance. When we relate the above argument to the curriculum, we might propose that “the curriculum should prepare the student for a number of the problems he is expected to meet.” We cannot attempt to prepare the student for all these problems: many of them, from welding a gate to finding the last nuclear element, are solved through experience and not through education. It is most important that the curriculum has a logical structure. In most disciplines the modularised approach can be used. You don’t learn all skills and theory at once: you progress from simple to more complicated in a logical sequence. Earlier in this paper we compared education with an industrial process. The curriculum stands for the production stages that transform the raw material into the finished product. These should be carried out in the most efficient way and with proper planning. There is, however, a major difference between an industrial process and a curriculum. The product of a factory is not a stakeholder in its own shape and destiny. In education, we do not only have to satisfy the market, but also the student. We must try to find the most efficient way of preparing a student for the world of work. 3.2 Stakeholders When we prepare a curriculum for technical education, we cannot do so in isolation. Think of the genius who made the product that nobody bought. As in any market, technical education has to be sold. This can be achieved by involving the customers in the design of the curriculum. In this case we do not mean through research by an outside consultant, who produces a report that disappears in a drawer, but rather through the actual involvement of the future employers of the technical students. It will take some persuasion to get the employers together: time is money, and every hour spent in workshops and seminars seems like an hour lost in earning money. They should, however, realise that only they know what skills they expect from their employees, and the time spent in workshops should be considered as an investment in the future. Again, education does not serve the future employers alone: first and foremost it serves the student. But we should be reasonably sure that the programme will be acceptable for the world of work. 3.3 Practical learning versus theory In technical education practical skills and underpinning knowledge (the theoretical background) are both important: the challenge is to find the correct balance between the two − the “How you should do it” should be complemented by the “Why we do it that way”. Why do we hold the hammer like this? Why should the temperature of the food be kept at this level? Why is it important to be polite to the customer? The ratio between practice and theory depends very much on the level and discipline of the educational field, but any technical programme that does not have a minimum of 50% practical exercises is not worth its name. In some apprenticeship systems, the practical training is left completely to the employer. This may be unsuccessful when the employer does not have the facilities to cover the whole curriculum.
Page 44 Participants’ Papers Learning for Life, Work and the Future 3.4 Key skills There are two aspects to technical education. One is the purely mechanical one: filing, drilling, measuring an electronic circuit, setting a lady’s hair and sewing a dress can all be learned by exercise and repetition. The other aspect is that of key skills. Those are the skills that every person needs to master in order to be successful in life and work. The use of modern information technology, numbers, communication, interpersonal skills and knowledge of the market place (entrepreneurial studies) all have to be integrated into the learning programme. When talking to future employers, one often hears the complaint that the students may be good craftsmen but they are unfit for the position because they do not behave according to the rules, arrive late for work, don’t know how to communicate with customers and don’t report on their activities correctly. Through the key skills programme, the students should learn how to become valuable people for business and industry. 4. Lifelong Learning Learning does not stop at the graduation ceremony. Technical Education should always be ready to provide courses for workers who have to catch up with rapidlychanging technology. Such courses could be prepared on the initiative of the learning institutions, or be initiated by professional bodies. When a national Tourism Board discovers new areas of interest for potential tourists, it could approach the national TVET Department with the request to prepare a module on that subject. The module could become part of the full-time learning programme, but since it is stand-alone, it could also be given as a separate course, taught in the evening and/or by distance education. Workers who want to improve their value in the market could follow courses that are related to their function. For instance, the lady who works behind the counter in a shop for vehicle parts could take a “Front Desk” course: an IT course on how to work with the database on the computer, and a course to learn to identify different car parts. 5. Conclusion The quality of Technical and Vocational Education can be greatly improved when the following measures are taken: • The mode of learning should take the individuality of the student into account • Learning should be outcomes-based • The curriculum should have a logical structure • The prospective employers should be involved in preparing the curricula • A good balance needs to be found between practical exercises and theory • Generic or key skills need to be integrated in the programmes • Facilities should be made available for working people to improve their skills. 6 KAFERE, Godfrey (Malawi): Learning for Life, Work and the Future − The TVET System 1. Background Since the birth of multi-party democracy in 1994, the Malawi Government set itself a number of major goals: respect for and promotion of human rights, poverty alleviation, human resource development and employment generation. One of the main challenges facing Malawi today is the problem of unemployment among its future technical college graduates. Rural-urban migration is on the increase as gainful employment in agriculture becomes scarcer for the fast-growing labour force. By 1998 the formal sector had a workforce of 760,000, of whom some 160,000 were in public service employment and 600,000 in the formal private sector. Additionally, about 200,000 young people enter the labour market every year and this number is expected to double until 2003. Currently, only 30,000 to 35,000 new jobs are created in the formal sector annually; the rest of the people are unemployed. However, these statistics include university graduates and those who have been trained at technical and vocational institutions. Unemployment is an undignified social status that should not be allowed in any country. Fortunately, self-employment is proving to be a viable alternative in Malawi. The mission of the Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training (MoVT) is to execute government social and labour policy through administration and technical vocational education and training. The main objectives include: • to promote and maintain optimum social justice and peace through the formulation, review and implementation of dynamic labour and employment policies and strategies that contribute to the country’s economic growth, national competitive-
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