TVETs Tasked to Ensure Sufficient Labour Market Workforce

BY WAKHUNGU ANDANJE

As the country braces for more skilled labour force Kenya Association of Technical Training Institutions(KATTI) have been tasked to ensure the labour market has certified workforce.

The ongoing capacity building workshop themed research and development in TVET a collaborative approach that has seen principals, directors, research coordinators and persons in charge of collaborations and linkages meet in Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUST), is tailored to deliberate and agree on the possible lee ways technical institutions will be able to train and certify over 15Million workers within the country.

The national director TVET Dr. Meshack Opwora lauded the workshop as important as it was key for the countrys development economically and socially through innovations.

He stated that all the TVET institutions should be able to bring the needed changes in the workplace and hence needs to be abreast with the coming changes by improving their programmes through TVET fairs, skills competition and production units within. 

Opwora said that for the purposes of technical institutions improving they need to embrace research innovations and collaborations.

Changes are being witnessed in the work environment and technology are being witnessed prompting our institutions to align to them fully.

“We want these changes to be done at a very high standard and can only be done through this research training and that is why we have assembled all the institutions within the country to realize this purpose, the sector is undergoing vigorous reforms that is aimed to produce more skilled workforce for the nation” He said.

The director observed that institutions should be ready to conform to the competency based curriculum training that is outcome and industry based.

“This meeting is aimed at training our officers who are in charge of liaising with industries and we want to collaborate with all key stakeholders in all rolling out our programmes including recognition of prior learning aimed at assessing and certifying the jua kali sector so that they are recognized in the job market.”

He stated that research was key in the innovations and commercialization of our TVET institution countrywide to have a production unit to carry out commercialization of the innovations learned and this will also help them generate their own source of revenue.

"This will also assist these institutions to be able to stand by themselves and stop relying on the government or funding". 

He lauded the close working relationship between the national and county governments adding that their collaborations are key in improving the institutions across the country.

"Our institutions have been categorized from vocational training centres at the county level where learners who have undergone training can join the national ones hence the two governments working together in terms of curriculum and policies."

“The national government is in charge of policy direction, standardization, capacity building, curriculum and examinations and it trickles down to the county technical institutions and the reason we are also doing research is because we want to concentrate on what skills are needed today and in the future and we are designing courses that are futuristic where learners can be quickly absorbed in the job market ”.

KATTI National Secretary General Shadrack Tanui said the meeting was important in the calendar of KATTI there was a lot of transformation in the TVET space where they were overseeing the rollout of the new curriculum and modularization of the same. 

Tanui also confirmed that there was an RPL training for practitioners ongoing across the country for the purposes of sensitizing and training our trainers so that they can be able to implement the new curriculum.

“Research is important when it comes to innovations and the meeting of all the over 250 TVET principals together with ILO and research coordinators to find new ways of doing things as we are in an era of 4.0 industrial revolution that embraces the use of (AI) artificial intelligence and new technologies to address the emerging needs that takes place in the World and for Kenya to position itself well globally then it requires that its youths be well skilled and this is the forum that has brought together leading researchers in the world on how to do things and carry out research so that as we collaborate to ensure all the players within the industry and sector get skills and be in a position to avoid skills mismatch and gaps that has been a problem for several years”. 

KATTI which is a professional association is mandated to ensure that this kind of skilling and new researchers can assist them reach out to the youths in villages and country at large to enable them learn from the best of what we are getting. 

Part of the participants attending the capacity building. By WAKHUNGU ANDANJE

“We are grateful that the state department of TVET has rolled out a very good agenda in collaboration with Germany and Finland in a curriculum that is rated as the best in the world and through research it will be successful and we will be able to implement what is needed to make the state department and the agenda of the government in realization of the social pillar of vision 2030.