Review plan to scrap some subjects in TVET institutions

On January 24, we reported that the government is in advanced stages of scrapping eight critical subjects from the current curriculum of the Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions. 

The subjects in question include Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, English, Entrepreneurship, History, and Business Studies.
 
This, the State minister for Higher Education, Mr John Chrysestom Muyingo, says is aimed at addressing the needs of employers who have on several occasions faulted institutes for producing unskilled graduates. (See “Govt declares 8 vocational subjects redundant”, Daily Monitor January 25.)

While it is true that producing employable graduates is key and that specialisation is important in producing quality skilled labour, scrapping the subjects in question might be a bit of a detriment. 
 
Skills taught at these institutes cannot be used in a vacuum.  A graduate in, say plumbing, woodwork technology and other courses offered at these institutes will need to be able to effectively communicate with the people they work with and for most probably in English.

To be truly successful, they will need entrepreneurial and business skills and perhaps this will aid in pushing them from being employees to job creators and keeping those businesses afloat. 
 
It is foolhardy to aim at churning out hundreds of graduates who, yes, are skilled vocationally but have no unique selling point from a robot that simply produces and reproduces what it is programmed to do. 

In this era of artificial intelligence (AI), we have to be very careful to not subject our students to doing the bare minimum in the name of specialisation of focused learning lest they be replaced by AI.

Employers today seek for the most attractive skill set which usually is a mix of soft and hard skills, this is what usually sets apart an employable graduate from one who is set up to spend their working life labouring away at an entry level job with nothing extra to offer. To be marketable and attractive to an employer or client, one should be advantaged with more than just their vocational skill.   

Perhaps we should pay attention to the education experts quoted in our story who say scrapping critical subjects like science is suicidal for the country which has directed its efforts in developing through promotion of science.  

Responding to employers’ needs is good but shouldn’t be done at the expense of the graduate’s ability to apply themselves more broadly in terms of knowledge and competencies and value addition.