Skills Development: Vocational Education
in the Islamic Countries
24
As everything or most of the assessment tools are online, the students get instant feedback of
their performance, highly flexible to students and instructors in terms of location and time and
can use enhanced question styles that incorporate interactive multimedia simulating the
practical environment of, specific vocational education and students learning activities
(Stödberg, 2012).
All the above assessments are done at institutional level or micro-level to judge the students
whether he has fully attained the intended knowledge content of that level. A student might be
awarded a token of appreciation as a form of motivation. At national level (macro-level
assessment) the OIC states have to ensure that all institutions are producing graduates
according to stated goals and objectives and at micro-level assessment the teachers assess their
students to examine the extent at which they have fully filled the required qualifications of that
level. The micro-level assessments prepare the students to sit for a macro-level assessment. If a
student fails to pass macro-level assessment, then the micro-level assessment remains
questionable and needs to be revised.
1.6. Critical Success Factors and Associate Key Challenges in Improving the
Performance of Vocational Education Systems and Practices.
Section Focus: Technical and Vocational education and training (TVET) is seen as a tool for
economic and social development inboth developed and developing countries. Much of TVET sector
has contributed highly to the development at both individual and national level, despite of the
challenges that TVET has faced.. In this section, we discuss the main challenges facing most of the
TVET systems as well as how other nations have responded towards improving the performance of
TVET systems.
1.6.1. Challenges Facing TVET Systems
Public perception toward TVET
Many educationists, parents and policymakers around the globe perceive TVET as a 'second -
class' education system, an alternative for academic failures (Yusuff & Soyemi, 2012; Zirkle &
Martin, 2012). For example, in USA, as emphasis is put in general education courses many
parents aswell as students have prioritized 4-year university degrees instead of pursuing TVET
courses and programs. As a result of this mind-set, TVET programs tend to receive studentswho
have not been successful in previous academic pursuits(Zirkle & Martin, 2012).
As in Africa, Nigeria also faces the same mind-set problem where TVET courses have lower
enrolment. Given the fact that Nigeria has set low requirement (160 cut-off points of JAMB
examinations as compared to 200 for university entry) of TVET programme, there has been less
enrolment of students (Yusuff & Soyemi, 2012). Nigeria still believes that polytechnics were set
up to only train the middle-level manpower thus student whohave failed to attain admission at
university level use TVET programme as the last alternative.
In a nutshell, the mind-set of people, educationists and government policies have to change so
as to have high quality enrolment in TVETsector and thus leading tohighly competent graduates
who will bring positive difference in the development of the nation.
Inadequate funding
There is inadequate funding at both institutional level and students' level. At institutional level,
mostly the equipment used are extremely expensive for the institution to procure. And as a