The editorial ‘Vocational education’ (SN 15/07/2016) has rightly called upon the government to give greater priority to technical and vocational education and training (TVET). In August 2010, a letter of mine was published in the media, which stated that ‘There is little doubt that one of the major problems that have faced Guyana over the past decades has been the enormous waste of human resources that results from our education system. …. It is now commonplace that of the 17,000 to 19,000 persons who enter the school system each year, only about 40% leave with any meaningful qualifications. Thus, on any given day, there are hundreds of thousands of unqualified and incidentally qualified persons seeking to make a good living.’
I also argued that the establishment of a comprehensive TVET programme holds much of the answer to this problem. All of this was rooted in a fundamental acceptance of TVET as a necessity, particularly in our socio/economic condition. As minister of education in 2004, I presented a paper that sought to give some idea to the Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD) of the ministry’s thinking on these matters. That paper, which I will deal with next week, considered some still relevant issues such as what link should be established between general and technical education and the nature of the arrangements for student ‘entry into the vocational education system as opposed to them continuing in the general education system’ (Editorial).
