DRAFT TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND ...

9
numbers. Religious bodies such as the Roman Catholic, the E. P. Church, and the
Presbyterian Church of Ghana all have vocational training institutions. A UNESCO survey
(2003) that sampled 30 vocational institutions in Ghana found that one third of them were
owned by religious bodies. The Presbyterian Church has a special unit called Vocational
Training for Females which is an advocacy group, a training provider, and promoter of nontraditional
female skills training for females. Other NGOs that are active in the TVET sector
are the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), the Young Women’s Christian
Association (YWCA), the Ghana Federation of the Disabled (and its affiliates), and the
Opportunities Industrialization Centre (OIC).
Industry groups such as the Association of Ghana Industries and the Ghana Employers’
Association are becoming active in the TVET sector. Previously they were passive providers
of opportunities for industrial attachment (or work-based learning) but now they are engaged
in negotiations and in the piloting of more structured industrial attachment with tertiary TVET
institutions.
2.5 Key Donors and their Interventions
The TVET sector was left out of the Educational Reform programme that began in 1987.
With the support of the World Bank and other donors, government focused attention on the
vocationalisation of the secondary school which prepared students for higher education rather
than the labour market. Donor involvement in the TVET sector has been on a low scale
compared to other areas of development. A few notable donor interventions that have
occurred in the last decade are described briefly.
Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). JICA gave technical and financial
assistance for the development of a Master Plan for Technical Education in 2000 -2001.
Though JICA’s plan was not implemented, it made a major impact on the development of a
National TVET Policy for Ghana. For example, the policy of introducing competency-based
training and a national qualification framework with the supporting structures were informed
by the JICA Master Plan. Since 2004, JICA has set up a Technical and Vocational Education
and Training Support (TVETS) Project which facilitated the passage of the COTVET Law,
developed detailed implementation plans for COTVET, and has been piloting CBT in
vocational training institutions and the polytechnic.
Royal Netherlands Government. Between 1999 and 2003 the Dutch Government assisted
Ghana by re-equipping and refurbishing 15 technical institutes and 5 secondary/technical
schools under the VOTEC Resource Centres Project (Duodu, 2006). Since 2004, several
Nuffic projects have been going on in all the polytechnics of Ghana. The Leadership and
Management Capacity Building project covers all the ten polytechnics. In addition, CBT
curricula are being piloted in four fields in the polytechnics: Agriculture Engineering,
Fashion Design, Building Construction, and Automobile Engineering. The third major Dutch
intervention is in the establishment of the Ghana Skills Development Centre (GSDC) at
Tema. The GSDC was initiated by Vlisco Helmond B.V. of Netherlands and its local
subsidiary Texstyles Ghana Ltd as a public-private partnership intervention that brought
together Development Partners (including Netherlands and UK’s DfID), the Government of
Ghana, and about 15 local industries to establish an industry-driven skill training facility that
would focus on hands-on-skills to meet the needs of industry.
The World Bank. The World Bank funded the Vocational Skills and Informal Sector
Support Project (VSP). The project aimed among other things “to redirect both public and
private vocational training institutions towards the provision of short, focused, practical,
competency-based and demand-driven training for people in the informal sector in five
selected occupational areas, namely: Electrical installation, Carpentry and Joinery,