Director-General of the Commission for Technical, Vocational Educational and Training (CTVET), Dr Fred Kyei Asamoah, has revealed that the regulation for TVET in the country will be managed by his outfit.

According to Dr Asamoah, in the past, government did not have a strategic plan that was “consciously [and] effectively implemented”. As such, it was necessary to have a properly structured plan to ensure there’s an oversight of the various departments working to achieve the five year strategic plan of government in attaining a sustainable TVET in the country.

“The five year strategic plan requires that we have to realign all TVET institutions to the Ministry of Education, which had led to the establishment of the Commission for TVET, TVET Service… Now, the [Ministry] has asked that the regulation of TVET in the entire country should be managed by the Commission for TVET and to ensure TVET is also promoted. When you come to the delivery of TVET at the pre tertiary level, we have put TVET Service in charge. So, we don’t have all these nineteen different ministries dealing with it. When it comes to tertiary TVET, then [we have] our ten technical universities plus the new one that has been established to make sure that we have people trained.”
Dr Fred Kyei Asamoah

Dr Asamoah explained that the five year strategic plan that was put together had policies such as the governance and management of TVET, quality of TVET, increasing access, sustainable funding and environmental sustainability, spanning from 2018 to 2022.

Challenges of TVET in Ghana

Recounting the problem government identified in undertaking the TVET program, Dr Asamoah indicated that when the NPP government took over in 2017, President Akufo-Addo in his first engagement stated that the country was not moving TVET as much as he wants due to the importation of people with requisite skill to undertake certain kind of jobs in the country. He noted that due to the fact that the President “had the Ghana Beyond Aid agenda”, it was necessary to develop a plan to address the situation.

“If you look at all the countries that have gone beyond aid, if you go to Europe, the one that has the highest number of young ones going to technical and vocational education right now is Switzerland – 78% plus… All these countries are doing well not because of the natural resources but because of the human capital [and] the human currency that they have.”
Dr Fred Kyei Asamoah

The Director-General for CTVET highlighted that, at the time, not many people wanted to have a conversation about TVET and data from 2000 suggests that the amount of “visibility and engagement we have had on TVET is none compared” to what happened in 2017. He revealed that the focus was essentially more on tertiary education and people coming out with degrees, “even though [we] had less than 30% of our secondary school graduates proceeding to tertiary”.

“It was predominantly more towards the grammar side. So, there was no conversation at all that was when government did the SWOT analysis… So, the President and cabinet approved the five year strategic plan to change the story from 2018. If you look at countries like Malaysia, Malaysia has gone through five of such strategic plans from 1980 until now, no wonder they came to pick palm nuts from here and now they are determining what is happening in the job market…”
Dr Fred Kyei Asamoah