Current technical, vocational courses not working – UBTEB

The Uganda Business Technical Examinations Board (UBTEB) says they have recommended to government to overhaul the current technical and vocational education curriculum to get rid of irrelevant courses.
While addressing the parliamentary Committee on Education and Sports yesterday, Dr Silver Mugisha, the board chairperson of UBTEB, said as the assessing body for courses offered by the vocational training institutions, they have observed that some of the courses they are assessing are irrelevant to the current needs of the labour market.
“As the assessing body, we can only advise. The courses do not seem to work. The demand for courses comes from the industry and we come up with the assessment but the courses we are assessing do not seem to work,” he said.
Dr Mugisha’s remarks were prompted by observations raised by Mr Geoffrey Macho, the Busia Municipality MP, who complained about the uneven geographical spread of vocational training institutions across the country and the quality of courses offered.
He said 80 per cent of the government vocational training colleges built in the 1970s, are ill-equipped and offer inferior courses such as garment cutting, bricklaying and carpentry.
Labour quality
Mr Macho said when students graduating from the institutions are taken to work in Chinese and other international companies, they are always rejected as ill-trained, which has led to Ugandans being labelled as less productive and yet the new schools built under the NRM regime offer lucrative courses in oil and gas, which may cause an imbalance in the professionals that the schools produce.
Mr Onesmus Oyesigye, the UBTEB executive secretary, declined to name the courses they have recommended to be dropped from the curriculum. He said they did not want to appear to be usurping the roles of the National Curriculum Development Centre.
But he said the reason they opted four years ago to introduce competence-based assessment of learners, which promotes skills development rather than the old system which encouraged cram work, was to correct the anomaly.
“Bricklaying and concrete practice will not go away because people have to continue building houses, but we have courses like radio technician, which are becoming outdated as very few people repair radios these days since radios are now incorporated into phones,” he said.
Mr John Twesigye Ntamuhiira, the Bunyaruguru MP, who is also the committee chairperson, said their visit to UBTEB on Friday was to acclimatise the committee with the work of UBTEB since 80 per cent of the legislators are new.
Ms Loy Muhwezi, the commissioner in charge of technical and vocational education in the Ministry of Education, said unlike the secondary school curriculum, the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) curriculum comes from the world of work ,which advises them on the new technologies and developments in the industry so that they design the training curriculum for such skills.
She said they have so far designed 27 curricular for Uganda Polytechnic Kigumba, and Kichwamba Technical College, where they worked with sector skills committees to design the TVET programmes for oil and gas and manufacturing.  

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