Skills Development: Vocational Education
in the Islamic Countries
25
result, fewer training equipment are purchased thus increasing student –to- equipment ratioas
a high number of students have to share equipment. As at students’ level, mostly students from
lower classes enrol for TVET courses, they face financial difficulties to pay for their education
(Yusuff & Soyemi, 2012). It is therefore, a great call to both the government and international
organizations to extend their funds to more of TVET sectors than universities and colleges. This
will help to increasing the enrolment and thus alleviating poverty since a high number of TVET
enrolment come from lower class society.
TVET Instructors
Like any other educational sector, TVET teachers are not well paidwhich makes the occupation
of teaching less prestigious. These facts make it difficult to persuade outstanding college
graduate to become TVET teachers or even recruit qualified and talented individuals from
industry to become TVET teachers. Statistics has shown that over 50% of first-year teachers
leave teaching profession within five years (Yusuff & Soyemi, 2012; Zirkle & Martin, 2012). As
we shall discuss in the preceding section, TVET sector is highly affected by changing technology
thus the instructors also have to upgrade their skill to meet these changes. Unfortunately, many
technical schools do not have financial resources to send their TVET teachers to professional
development like training thus opting for other profession since they can’t meet the new
changing education environment.
Mismatch between training and labour market skill demand
Much as there are a number of graduates in TVET sector, the level of unemployment amongst
them is undoubtedly visible. This is as a result of mismatch of the skilled attained by graduate
with those required by the industry (Dasmani, 2011; Raihan, 2014; Yusuff & Soyemi, 2012). The
reason behind this is failure of institutions to collaborate with industry so as to standardize and
update the skill competence needed by the job market. Therefore, the curriculumdesigners are
called upon to revise the current curriculum by including the industry as stakeholder. And
furthermore, the institutions should collaborate or establish partnership with industries so as
to keep track of the changing skill requirements.
Low quality training
As discussed earlier, there has been poor quality of training within TVET schools due to low
funding for TVET. Becausemost TVET institutions cannot afford to purchase expensive training
equipment, they mostly put undue emphasis on theory and certification rather than skill
acquisition (Yusuff & Soyemi, 2012). This has led to poor quality graduateswhocannot fit in the
labour market, thus, increasing the level of unemployment in the country.