Cabinet approves 5-year skills development strategy

The Cabinet has approved a five-year skills development strategy to enhance training in technical and vocational training institutions in the country.

Consequently, the Council of Technical and Vocational Education Training (COTVET) is creating a Skills Development Fund to finance technical and vocational education.

The Executive Secretary of COTVET, Dr Fred K. Asamoah, disclosed this at a stakeholders’ validation workshop on the establishment of sector skills bodies in Accra Wednesday.

He said as part of the strategy, technical and vocation training would go beyond classroom learning to include internships in factories for the students to acquire the practical experience in their respective courses.

The sector skills bodies are to serve as mediators between technical and vocational training institutions and the industry by enhancing skills development courses. 

Partnership

Dr Asamoah said the current situation where the products of technical and vocational institutions lacked the needed skills would be reversed with the partnership that the institutions would be entering into with the industry.

 He added that the private sector would be the major contributor to the Skills Development Fund, with the government contributing less.

That arrangement, he noted, was to empower the private sector to have a strong say in the kind of training to be offered.

Right skills

In his presentation, the Coordinator of Occupational Standards of COTVET, Mr Theophilus Zogblah, said it was only when students were given the right set of skills that they could secure jobs and work productively to grow and sustain the country’s economy.

“We have to position ourselves to ensure that the industry is expanding and we have the right skills from training institutions to feed the industry,” he said.