Skills Development: Vocational Education
in the Islamic Countries
137
THEME 3: Challenges inTVETsector inUganda
Despite these initiatives, the TVET sectors still faces many challenges to ensure quality
education and to attract poor people particularly. Few challenges were drawn from
interview data.
 TVET sectors lacks in facilities, such as modern equipment, lab, machineries for
offering updated skill training.
 Wastage or exploitation of resources by the top authorities that are meant to
develop vocational institutions
 Graduates from TVET sectors require start-up capital, which the TVET institutes
cannot offer.
 Providing community based skills training that are relevant to the current set up
of Ugandan society. Otherwise, the acquired skills from remote areas forces
villagers to move to urban areas to search for a living due to lack of
implementation of those skills in rural areas.
 General awareness towards TVETsectors is still very lowespecially in rural areas.
Therefore, TVET sectors are not attracting many people.
 The standard and curriculum of TVET sectors have failed to meet international
standard.
 Empowering the trained people to work in their respective area so as to foster
development. Many skilled labors migrate to urban areas in search of a living.
 There is a lack of industrial linkage with TVET institutions and industries.
The above challenges are supported by the following interview data:
“I think if we need to alleviate poverty, we need to understand the dynamics of the society of
these people. These people also need to be empowered. This empowering should also be
given in terms of needs that are within their domain of interest. Because if you give them any
skills which is not applicable to their own society, they are likely to move to urban area for
where she/he can earn get a job in her/his skills domain to earn a living. What am
emphasising is that skills should be directed to need interest of the society.” (P4Ug)
“the curriculum students are following needs to be revised because we are still following the
old curriculum, which is more theoretical than practical” (P2Ug)
“so the problem that I see here is that there is no linkage between the labour market or
industries and Vocational Institutions. It’s we who developed these program and have been
running them for decades. Therefore, if we don’t involve the users (industry) then it will not
be relevant. And this is the gap”(P4Ug)