Technical, vocational training expensive – UBTEB

KAMPALA. Uganda Business and Technical Examinations Board (UBTEB) has said that training technical and vocational students is proving to be expensive.
According to the UBTEB Executive secretary, Onesmus Oyesigye, because the courses are mainly for skills development, the teaching material they use make it expensive. He urged the public to support it for enhanced productivity and growth.

“Vocational training is very expensive but we don’t want to compromise quality. We are looking at each student getting a skill, this will involve daily practice and the materials they use are expensive on the market. At least, when the students complete, they easily get jobs,” Mr Oyesigye said on Tuesday as institutions started their end of year assessment.

Ms Harriet Kagezi, the Principal Ntinda Vocational Training Institute said that some of her students have already started getting jobs in the neighbouring industries which has forced some to abandon studies.

“The technical training is good because the moment students get the skills, they start earning. The problem is that they get excited and don’t return to complete their courses. We paid for all these nine students who have missed the exams because they were our pioneer students. We are going to look for them and convince them to come back and finish,” Ms Kagezi said.

Their courses range between Shs250, 000 per month for short courses and Shs480,000 a term, but Ms Kagezi said this will be raised for new students to Shs600, 000 next year.

It was observed that most of the technical institutes don’t have accommodation for students and houses for tutors.
A total of 61,253 candidates are doing this year’s business, technical and vocational training examinations.

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