The Sunday Mail
Thomas Gatsi and Ityai Frank Kurebwa
Zimbawe has thousands of graduates who have attained college diplomas and degrees yet employers have often raised concerns about graduates from colleges and polytechnics lacking initial skills and competences required for the job.
Does this mean that industrial colleges, polytechnics and vocational training centres are failing to adequately prepare the students for the real world of work?
This may have to do with the way skills are being taught at institutions. It is against this background that there is need for a serious but constructive debate on how to implement training for the job and employment creation.
It should be noted that a graduate student should ideally come out of the college fully equipped with the requisite skills and competences for employment or employment creation.
Employers desire to recruit candidates for the job and not for retraining for the job.
This should be made clear to all institutions of higher learning which produce prospective employees for industry and commerce.
The assumption that students acquire the requisite skills and competences needed by the industry when they go for industrial exposure, popularly known as attachment, or when they finally get employed deserves urgent correction because it has caused institutions to emphasise on satisfying conditions necessary for the student to pass the examination at the expense of developing skills and competences for the job.
It is, therefore, imperative that all stakeholders in the technical and vocational education and every training system put their heads together and rethink on the effectiveness of our skills training approach so that we can produce innovative and productive graduates.
There is need to consider seriously a competence-based education and training approach to training in order to meaningfully prepare students for work and livelihood.
This is not a new phenomenon.
Countries with best practices in training like Germany, United States of America, Malaysia, Tanzania, and Indonesia, etc have long adopted competence-based education and training, with a remarkable success.
Competence-based education and training implies that students are trained by doing the actual activity (skill) according to the standard of performance that is expected in the workplace, hence trainers are required to utilise skills proficiency schedules and standards that are developed by experts from the industry when providing training.
A student trained in fabrication should be able to produce a window frame, a wheel barrow, a truss etc, according to industry standards. Similarly, a student in clothing should be able to sew a trousers, skirt, etc also according to industry standards.
Competence-based education and training ensures uniformity in basic training irrespective of the college or institution which one has attended.
There is no occupation in which competence-based education and training is not applicable because every occupation has special competences that must be mustered during training and it can be implemented at all levels from early childhood development to university levels.
Competence-based education and training is an outcome-based learning system that focuses on observable results.
In competence-based education and training it is the ability to perform a skill that matters, hence theory is mainly taught as underpinning knowledge.
There are no entry restrictions as long as one is able to follow instruction.
According to the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, competence-based education and training is a way of “approaching (vocational) training that places primary emphasis on what a person can do as a result of training (the outcome), and as such represents a shift away from an emphasis on the process involved in training (the inputs)”.
There we are Zimbabwe, how many of our school leavers are classified as unsuitable for training – madofo?
Psychomotor Activities Minister Josiah Hungwe will always ask any prospective job-seeker who approaches his office, “What can you do?”
Surprisingly even higher degree-holders struggle to respond to that question.
Competence-based education and training is the assessment that allows for recognition and accreditation of prior learning.
The experienced workers who do not have formal education will be assessed through skills testing.
Upgrading of skills through skills testing will augment the skilled workers’ population in the country and normally this type of skilled workers do not have tendency of leaving the country for the so-called greener pastures.
Competence-based education and training thrives well in a form of qualifications framework.
Many countries such as South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, to mention but a few, have developed national qualifications framework to harmonise and standardise qualifications as well as enable transferability of qualifications to other countries.
A qualifications framework can define career paths as well as route of progression in skills development.
Sad to say, Zimbabwe does not have a qualifications framework except the rotting draft called Zimbabwe Examinations and Qualifications Authority.
What has gone wrong with us standardising our skilled workers qualification framework?
Zimbabwe needs a national qualifications framework to address the unfair discrimination in education and employment opportunities as well as to enhance the quality of practical skills education and training.
It is unfortunate that very few candidates from the more than 300 000 thousand students leaving school each year are being absorbed in the apprenticeship programme, direct college or vocational training centre intakes, perhaps due to the hard economic situation.
However, the need for skills development remains critical and urgent hence prioritisation of skills training is inevitable.
The demand for skills training is still far from being met.
This is why there is justification for President Mugabe’s creation of the Department of Psychomotor Activities in Education.
The mammoth task of providing skills for employment creation and industrial growth in Zimbabwe deserves special attention in order to avoid sitting on a time bomb.
The idle hands of the youth and the unemployed may be transformed into the devils’ workshop that breeds crime, prostitution, hooliganism, etc.
The lack of skills for the job amongst school-leavers poses a serious threat to the nation hence an emergency redress of the challenge is needed yesterday, perhaps through establishing a special skills ministry like what Botswana and Kenya has done.
To stimulate collective and co-ordinated effort towards implementation of psychomotor activities in education at all levels there is urgent need for the Psychomotor Department to craft an all-inclusive National Psychomotor Education/Technical and Vocational Education and Training policy framework.
In light of this there is need for Government and all stakeholders to ensure sustainable financing of the Department of Psychomotor Activities in Education to produce instruments that will guide skills training.
A highly literate country like Zimbabwe needs coherent instruments that guide skills development programmes because all meaningful education should result in the acquisition and utilisation of skills for self-reliance, employment creation and industrial growth.
