Skills Development: Vocational Education
in the Islamic Countries
155
Free Education and scholarship: In order to attract poor people, there is a provision for
financial support in some countries of OIC (Example: Bangladesh). However, due to lackof funds,
many other countries could not offer free TVET education.
Short training (based on society needs) : In many cases, the government has introduced
informal training programs for a short period of time targeting a specific skill needs of the
society.
Quality Education: In order to ensure effective skilled manpower, quality teaching and training
is utmost important. Therefore, government has taken many initiatives towards ensuring this.
For instance, some countries in OIC member states such as Bangladesh have taken following
initiatives for ensuring quality education:
1. Organizing teacher training programs for enhancing capacity of TVET teachers;
2. Installing new machineries in a small scale for updating training facilities;
3. Sending teachers to a developed country for gaining recent knowledge and skills ;
4. In some cases, updating policies for improving quality of TVET education;
Loan and/or start-up schemes: The governments in some OIC member states such as Uganda,
have put some initiatives to empower youth to join TVET training as well as help them to start-
up their own business. For instance, they provide small funds to the graduates for creating their
own business.
THEME 3: Challenges of TVET sectors
Despite these initiatives, the TVET sector is still facing many challenges to ensure quality
education and to attract poor people towards job oriented training. Few challengeswere
drawn from interview data.
 Most of the developing and less developed countries of OIC member states have
lack of facilities in TVET sectors, such as modern equipment, lab, machineries for
offering updated skill training.
 Social value of TVET graduates is still a challenge in many OIC countries such as
Bangladesh, Palestine. Graduates of TVET sectors in those countries are not
getting proper recognition in both working place and society.
 Awareness of general people towards TVET sectors is still not very satisfactory
and therefore, TVET sectors will not be able to attract many poor people.
 The curriculum of TVET sectors in many countries of OIC is not able to compete
with the international standard.
 There is a lack of industrial linkagewith TVET institution in many OIC countries.
 Wastage or exploitation of resources by the top authorities that are meant to
develop vocational institutions is another big challenge for many OIC member
states.
 TVET infrastructure and factories have been damaged severely due to having
continual war in some OIC member states such as Palestine which is major
constrain for improving TVET sectors.