CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1Background of the study
Vocational education and training as defined by UNESCO (2010, p. 9) is “an educational process leading to the acquisition of practical skills, attitudes, knowledge and skills” knowledge of the occupations in various sectors of the social economy and social life. “VET as an education system enriches the management of economic and development challenges (Quisumbing, 2001).
However, this applies when the implementation of VET meets the needs of the population. VET must also be adapted to the needs of the environment. socially, economically, culturally and politically. Alam (2008) states that the strength of a nation lies in its people.
Vocational training as such is the key to human development as it determines the type of development of a country based on the quality and relevance of the offered vocational training. However, Wallenborn (2009) argues that development in developing countries, especially in Africa, is still sluggish compared to developed countries due to the quality of education and training offered. The question of the quality of education and training also concerns VET.
Therefore, the contribution of VET to development in Africa is limited. This is due to factors related to the implementation of vocational training. Vocational training was and is a common development strategy for many countries around the world, including Australia, Germany, China, Taiwan, India, Bangladesh, Ghana, Botswana and Africa South (Alam, 2008, p. 9).
Australia and Germany have used vocational training to give young people skills and knowledge to address the problem of youth unemployment (Iacovou and Arnstein, 2007). Countries such as Taiwan, China and India have further developed VET as a tool to promote the creation of skilled labor (UNESCO, 2009). This increases productivity and thus economic growth. However, the role of VET continues to be in the promotion of social development. This shows that VET plays different roles in development. VET was also implemented as an anti-poverty initiative. Among the numerous poverty alleviation initiatives, VET is a program for developing skills for young people. 2 | P a g e Tikley (2012) argues that different environmental factors need to be included in the VET system. The inability of VET to consider environmental factors undermines their impact as a development initiative. Vocational training as a youth program must also take into account the factors of youth dynamics.
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