Acting Director-General for the Commission for Technical and Vocational Training (COTVET), Dr Fred Asamoah, has disclosed that the Commission is working closely with industries to equip students with competency and job-required skills.

According to him, the Commission has moved away from supply based training and is now focused on demand based training, where industries in which graduating students are to find themselves, are an integral part of the development of COTVET curriculum.

“We are making sure Technical and Vocational institutions have the required infrastructure to train students and also meet international standards. The curriculum being used to train students is the industry based one and that is how we set the kids up for life after school. Now we don’t just focus on supplying the job market but we work with the industry and are informed about the kind of experts they need and we produce them.” he stated.

Dr Fred Asamoah noted that COTVET works in a regulatory position and makes sure processes work. “It means we improve vocational training and now we look at the demand in the market and make sure students can fill in the existing gaps after graduation and that helps students a lot.” he reiterated.

The educationist noted that Technical and Vocational institutions have now moved from simply training and getting students to memorise to focusing on competency-based training which is dominated by constant demonstrations.

To promote consistent skills-based training to meet industry standards, the government is focused on equipping Technical and Vocational institutions with the necessary infrastructure to compete with the international community.

“Now, technical institutions have upgraded infrastructure and equipment that match up to, and in some cases are more improved than what we have in some of our universities. We once had a German partner visit one of our institutions and was surprised our equipment were up to date and matched up to what they had. We should know that the world skills competition does not focus on different standards so we need to make sure our standards are up to international standards and prepare students with the required skills for the world market.” the COTVET boss indicated.

On his authority, informal training in Technical and Vocational institutions is being replaced with innovation and research which will ultimately lead to the reduction of the importation of finished products into the country.

“We don’t want the situation where the Ghanaian can only fix cars but get to the point where we make and export cars too.” he intimated.

Dr Fred Asamoah made this known in an engagement with the Ghana Education Service under the theme; ‘Positioning Ghana’s Education for Sustained Development’, the first of the novel series under the umbrella, ‘Happy FM Development Dialogues’ spearheaded by the Epa Hoa Daben political talk show.