Regional Strategy for Technical and Vocational Education and Training

Caribbean Community Secretariat Competency - based Curriculum Design
TVET Council, Barbados - Ministry of Labour and Social Security,
Barbados, 19 to 23 November 2001

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Section 1 Pre-requisites for TVET

The entry requirements for TVET are essentially basic skills in Literacy and numeracy and those concepts, principles, skills and attitudes that are required for continuing education after the first phase of the education system.

In determining the parameters of this Regional Strategy for TVET the education system is regarded as comprising two phases. The first phase is up to age 11. The second phase encompasses education and training at any of the following:

-All-age primary schools
-Post -primary centres
-Lower secondary schools (3 years)

• Secondary schools (5 and 7 years)
• Technical Colleges/Institutions.

This simple demarcation in two phases is being used in the Strategy because it allows for accommodation of the various arrangements existing in Member States for the provision of education up to secondary level and continuing on to the TVET Institutions. The Strategy is targeted to the second phase of the education system.

The first phase of the education system is of critical importance in providing an adequate foundation for activities at the second phase. Although the Strategy does not deal specifically with this first phase Member States need to pay urgent attention to the specific analyses and interventions necessary to improve and strengthen the education provisions during this phase.

In order to identify the pre-requisites of the first phase for TVET, it is useful to identify factors that hinder students from deriving maximum benefits from TVET programmes.

Some of these factors are an inability to process information and inadequate skills in literacy and numeracy. Educators in TVET claim that literacy and numeracy are serious concerns for TVET programmes as they are in fact for any other education programme. lndeed many candidates for TVET are unable to read and perform elementary mathematical operations; yet in many cases this is the principal rationale for their being placed in TVET programmes.

An adequate foundation for TVET should therefore provide students with ample opportunity to develop skills in literacy and numeracy. In the first phase of the education system these skills should be developed through systematic instruction and should be reinforced through the various subject areas offered. In most territories the primary school curriculum includes:

-Language Arts -Mathematics
-Social Studies
-Family Life Education and -Science

All these subject areas can provide students with concepts, skills and attitudes that are essential as a foundation for continuing education.

The science programmes in particular are of special significance for TVET. These programmes can incorporate certain simple technological concepts. They should also pro- vide students with opportunities to design and build models, make useful products and demonstrate skills in creativity and innovation. Through the science programmes students can also acquire skills such as observing, measuring, classifying, inferring, predicting, making hypotheses and experimenting. The students also learn to handle and care for simple pieces of apparatus.

Another consideration for programmes at this phase is the development of students' metacognitive skills or skil1s in learning how to learn. Given the vast amount of information students are asked to process, they need to develop from an early age efficient study habits and learning to learn strategies.

The development of desired attitudes towards TVET also begins at this phase of the education system. By incorporating aspects of technology into the curriculum students will begin to be aware of the value of technology in daily life and of TVET as a viable option in continuing education and desirable for a future career.

In some territories a few programmes in TVET are offered in this first phase. The programmes should be strengthened and given equivalent status to the other subject areas in the curriculum.

The provision of these pre-requisites al the first phase of the education system is linked to the quality of the teacher training programmes for teachers at ibis level. Across the Region, most primary school teachers operate as generalists. Therefore the teacher training programmes need to focus on content and methodology in the various subject areas. In order to prepare teachers to pro vide that foundation deemed adequate in the first phase, teachers will need special training to enable them to deal with the literacy and numeracy concerns in the school system. Exposure of the teachers to science and aspects of technology is also necessary if these areas are 10 be regarded as a component of general education programmes.

It is recognised that the success of the interventions proposed for developing and improving TVET depends on the type of foundation students obtain in the first phase of the education system. Therefore concomitant action to ensure effectiveness of this preparatory phase will need to be undertaken as the following actions being adopted for an effective system for TVET are implemented.

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