KAMPALA – In a bid to improve competency amongst trainees, Uganda Business and Technical Examinations Board (UBTEB) has carried out a training of Technical and Vocational Education and Training – TVET assessors.
The week-long training is focused on enabling lasting solutions for producing trainees with the required skills in order to be absorbed in the world of work, said Ms. Nasaza Jalia, Manager, Vocational Education at UBTEB at Uganda Industrial Research Institute, Namanve, Kampala on Monday.
According to UBTEB, the ever-changing trends in the labor market have required that TVET graduates be dynamic, innovative and competitive in the labor market which has, in turn, called for a shift in TVET training and assessment towards competency-based education and training hence calling for capacity building for TVET practitioners.
“When we come here, for example, when we set them aside, we, first of all, train them through the processes of assessment, how to manage our students’ results, how to score the students, how to develop the test items, then later, they develop a practical test item, which they go and do it themselves.”
In so doing, Madam Jalia says they’re also examining the processes that they are going through to come up with a final product.
“The trainees are exposed to industrial automated equipment, build confidence but also learn a lot when they go to the industry.”
Madam Jalia all is driven at ensuring that what is trained at school is what is done in the industry and can be done at its best.
“So we are trying to create that close linkage, that close collaboration between what is at school and what is in industry…because some of these instructors may have been in industry some time long time but their institutions may not have all that sophisticated equipment,” she said, adding that, “these people must understand that the world is moving.”
She also noted that they are also promoting blended learning where a student studies in a school for three days, then the other remaining two days he goes to the field.
Mr. Anyewi George, one of the assessors undergoing the training is optimistic that lots of “still missing gaps” will be covered since they have been exposed to new technologies for new competencies.
“….there are new technologies always coming like machines that we have never used before. With this, I can go and transfer the new things I have learnt to others,” he said.
He, however, decried the shortage of the right tools and equipment in their respective institutions.
“You find there is a certain job which needs to be done using a specific tool which is lacking hence improvising but accuracy will be lacking.”
“Also, at times machines are there but we lack the competency to operate them hence the need for such trainings,” he added.
Another beneficiary, Ms. Elizabeth Lunyoro, a tailor said that UBTEB has “steered and sharpened us up” through learning more than what we had already acquired.
“I find this a very good training, I would say that if was possible, each one of us in the work world would come and renew our skills.”
