Skills Development: Vocational Education
in the Islamic Countries
5
alleviation and governments should give utmost priority, considering the anticipated
consequence and task ahead for sustainable development (N. U. Alhasan & Tyabo, 2013).
Economically sustainable country must provide goods, services and other basic amenities to
their inhabitant consistently. Example is quoted from developing countries by stating that: “a
number of developing countries are currently promoting vocational education and training
(VET) as away to build human capital and strengthen economic growth” (Loyalka et al., 2015).
VET and Employment
VET is carried out by training and education providers whose primary purpose is to prepare
youth for employment in recognized occupations (N. U. Alhasan& Tyabo, 2013). To justify this
statement, Nigeria, an OIC member state, has put emphasis on skilled manpower through VET
sectors to eradicate poverty by means of employment: “graduates of vocational and technical
institutions are the empowered youths, they are highly skilled entrepreneurs, many of the so
called ‘’expatriate engineers’’ who are being paid huge sum of money in dollars to build
roads and bridges in Nigeria are graduates of vocational colleges”(N. U. T. Alhasan, Abdullahi,
2013).
Likewise, many other developing and developed countries mainly rely on VET to reduce
unemployment rate in their countries. The basic education in many of these is almost
compulsory. However, access to higher education is becoming an issue due to lack of resources
or entry requirement to the higher educational institutions. According to UNESCO (2017a) in
the year 2016 the global number of out-of-school is 263million people from primary age, lower
secondary age and upper secondary age as shown in figure 1.1 and 1.2. This is a si gnificant
improvement compared toprevious years. However, the current number of out -of-school is also
an issue when considering economic growth, poverty eradication and reduction on
unemployment rate. In order to improve this situation, dropped out studen ts need to be
included in skills training via VET sectors so that they will be able to gain certain level of
competency before entering labour market. The recent empirical research also provides similar
finding. For example Saleh (2017) found that ‘vocational training contributes to a decline in the
unemployment rate in the regions studied. The higher the percentage of people who completed
vocational training, the lower the unemployment rate’ (p. 12). Therefore VET can be an option
to reduce the unemployment rate as it prepares learners for jobs that are based on manual or
practical activities, traditionally non-theoretical and totally related to a specific trade,
occupation or vocation for immediate employment (NICHE, 2010).
The Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) comes up with an idea of ‘bringing learning visible’. It
focuses on learning and informal training irrespective of how, when andwhere they are learnt.
This is also a system that enables skilled personnel who have acquired the necessary skills
required toperform at an appreciable level in a specific trade area non-formally or informally to
seek or be employed as skilled personnel whohad gone through the formal training system. This
is achieved by assessing the competency level of these skilled personnel an awarding themwith
certificateswhenever they are found competent. With these awards they can seekor be engaged
as formal VET graduates.