Director of the Barbados Vocational Training Board, Henderson Thompson speaking yesterday.
There appears to be too wide a gap between the equipment available to train students in the technical and vocational institutions and the state-of-the-art equipment available in many sectors and this is proving to be challenge.
That’s according to Director of the Barbados Vocational Training Board, Henderson Thompson, who explained that this is one of the reasons why there is often criticism levelled at those institutions regarding their ability to prepare the students for the workforce. He was speaking yesterday at the 16th Annual Conference of Association of Caribbean Higher Education Administrators (ACHEA) at the Hilton Hotel on the topic ‘Partnerships and Alliances in Higher Education: The Role of the Private Sector’
He explained that a challenge instructors face is that there is very limited technology, limited budgets to purchase needed equipment, and no viable maintenance budget to refurbish the existing equipment. This, he said, no doubt poses a challenge for them, as they are training graduates on dated equipment, therefore when the graduates go into industry, both them and the employers become frustrated.
“The debate rages on as to how far higher education, rather post secondary education, should go in preparing students for life, especially for employment and particularly for a specific job. In small economies we do not often have the luxury of never ending debates about workforce preparation; when our nurses or elderly care graduates hit the job market we do not often have the luxury of providing them with a highly trained supervisor dedicated solely to ensuring that they, the graduates, learn the ropes and become highly proficient on the job. Rather graduates of all of our post-secondary institutions are expected in most instances to hit the ground running,” he indicated.
Thompson noted that anything less than that and employers call to ask ‘what are the students being taught?’ As such, he argued, that this reality brings into clear focus one of the roles the private sector can play in a“most constructive way” in higher education, promoting and facilitating the creation of industry-led curriculum in technical and vocational areas.
“By industry led curriculum we are not advocating that the institutions abdicate their role as the guardians and facilitators of the pedagogy, rather we are advocating close collaboration with the private sector indeed with business and industry on the role to help shape the requirements and criteria for competency development,” he stated.
The BVTB Director added that some of this already happens, but is adamant that the approach needs to be solidified so that the benefits are widespread.
“The manufacturing industry for example possesses a level of technology that is far advanced and sometimes even non-existent in the training institutions. It is therefore important for the higher education institutions to be aware of what they are training and teaching so that those standards can be reflected in industry.
“The institutions therefore need to partner with industry to determine for example how a simulation model can be acquired for the institution to provide students with some exposure to the authentic work requirements,” he said.
The director added that where it is not possible or feasible to acquire equipment or simulators, the educational institution should partner with the private sector to allow the students and trainees to go in the industry to
train on this updated technology and equipment. (JRT)