Vocational schools urged to compete globally

Government has instructed trainers and assessors of students in vocational institutions to focus more on churning out skilled graduates eligible for employment on the international market.

The Ministry of Education said Uganda’s graduates in vocational studies must be highly competitive so that they can easily be absorbed into the job market upon graduation or during their course of training. The call was made in Kampala yesterday at the beginning of the two-week training of assessors for the Uganda Business and Technical Examinations Board (Ubteb).

Mr James Kakooza, the permanent secretary at the Education ministry, in a message read by the commissioner for teacher education, Dr Jane Egau Okou, reasoned that many times Ugandan graduates in vocational studies must ably compete with their counterparts from neighbouring countries such as Kenya for international jobs .

“We want to get it to the international level. We want people to recognise that when you are trained in Uganda, you are a real material that the world of work will want. Once people know that, then we shall go across,” Dr Egau told Daily Monitor on the sidelines of the training.
She added: “In the trade and tourism industry, for example, we know people coming from Kenya are of quality because they have already built a brand. So we want to build a brand so that people say, ‘when you get a welder from Uganda, that is an excellent person and all that will come from the work the assessors do’.”

Dr Egau explained that the government aims at realising this professionalism within five years.
The two-week training session seeks to, among others, ground assessors on changes occasioned by the digital era and new technologies, polish their interpretation skills and also instil trust and confidence in pursuance of vocational studies.

The executive secretary of Ubteb, Mr Onesmus Oyesigye, said at least 700 assessors would be trained to help assess students spread across the country.

“We managed to train 218 last year [in the second phase]. This time, we are training 175 participants. But this group is unique because we have those from training institutions and those from the world of work. So that at the need of it all, the training will be on a tripartite basis,”  he told Daily Monitor.

These would be drawn from vocational schools, industries where students undergo internship and also from government under Ubteb.

“This is because our model of assessment is of three phases. One is continuous and the other is summative and the other practical. One [assessment] takes place within the institution and industry and the other one is administered with these people we are training,” Mr Oyesigye said.

He added: “Sometimes you find that the people in the industry are saying that we are not producing people with the right skills as if they are not part of system, so we have brought them on board.”