Inclusive technical and vocational skills training in Zambia: opportunities and challenges

Clive Mutame Siachiyako

The Technical Education, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training Authority (TEVETA) regulates, coordinates and monitors technical education, vocational and entrepreneurship training (TEVET) in Zambia in consultation with industry, employers, employees and other stakeholders in Zambia. Broadly, TEVETA develops curriculum and training systems, registers learning institutions offering technical, vocational and entrepreneurship training, manages the TEVET Fund and assesses and certifies learners in the sector.

The Zambian TEVET sector has a number of training pathways. These include:

·         Institutional-Based Learning

·         Open, Distance and Flexible Learning

·         Work-Based Learning

·         TEVET Learnership Scheme

·         Secondary School Vocational Education and Training

Training institutions offering training under any pathway are required to register with TEVETA. The bulk of the training is institutional based. The TEVET Learnership is similar to Apprenticeship training that most countries implement. The Learnership is a Dual Based Training, which combines theoretical classroom education and on-the-job-training at a workplace. The approach is based on industry’s willingness to partner with training institutions.

Challenges of the TEVET sector in Zambia

Access, quality, relevance, gender parity and long term financing are the main sector challenges, each of which will be explained separately below.

ACCESS

Access to TEVET is mainly a challenge, inter alia, due to the limited number of training institutions and the concentration of training institutions in four provinces (along the line of railway connections) out of the ten provinces of Zambia. About 82% of training institutions registered by TEVETA are in these 4 provinces. People in provinces away from the line of the railway are denied access to training. These provinces have a limited pool of skilled persons to drive and stimulate development. Skilled labour to undertake developmental projects in these areas is imported from elsewhere, thus depriving people and provinces of income. Government policy to construct new trades training institutes is key in increasing access to TEVET and empowering people with lifelong skills required in meeting national and sustainable development goals.

 QUALITY and RELEVANCE

Quality of skills is affected by both little investment in modern equipment and workshops and the lack of capacity building on trainers. Most trainers have been trained on old equipment and have remained behind on new technologies. The trainers cannot adequately impart skills using modern equipment in cases when its acquired, hence affecting the quality of skills supplied to the industry. The quality of TEVET also has a bearing on the relevance of the training. When trainers are not up-skilled, the delivery of a relevant and quality training is negatively affected. Coupled with low-scale industry –training collaboration, the relevance of skilled persons for some industries have become more challenging.

Industry–training sector collaborations are based on willingness rather than policy. Incentives to attract industry to such collaborations are non-existent. Instead some sectors like the mining sector run their own training centres whilst some hire foreign skilled persons. Collaboration between training and industry is possible at curriculum development, internships/apprenticeship or skills audits. To ensure that skills developed in TEVET is relevant to the industry, curriculum development and reviews are collaboratively done between TEVETA and relevant industry to narrow the theoretical – practical divide. Industry actors, especially when backed and financed by foreign investors, have modern equipment for improved production processes that TEVET can benefit from in improving quality and relevance of skills.

There is also a shift from technical and vocational training to business training in the sector. Low costs for providers to run business programmes, increasing demand and preference for programmes that lead to white colour jobs drive this shift. Business programmes have become a money-spinner to trades training institutes. However, this threatens Zambia’s competitiveness in the region as artisans, technicians and other skilled persons required in the country’s economic mainstays of mining, tourism, agriculture and other sectors will be in further short supply. The shift puts Zambia into a more consumption and trading country position instead of production and value adding to earn more from the resource endowment. Job creation and poverty reduction are risked when skilled persons to drive the process are in short supply.

GENDER PARITY

Equity-wise, TEVET has remained dominated by male students. Female learners prefer business programmes in relation to technical and science ones. According to TEVETA learner data management system statistics for the period 2010 – 2017, about 92% and 56% of the learners in technical and science programmes were male. Incentivising TEVET with female scholarships and employment quotas for girls with technical and science qualifications might help narrow the divide. Further, increasing the number of technical girls’ schools could lead to having girls with technical and science career inclination and strengths. The impacts of female scholarships in TEVET and increasing number of technical girls’ schools have not been assessed in relation to gender equity in TEVET.

FINANCE

Financing the sector has been a challenge for years. The sector is very cost-intensive as it requires workshops, equipment and tools to ensure relevant training and equip learners with sufficient practical skills they can easily apply when they transition into the industry. The Skills Development Fund was introduced in 2017 to address the financing need. The financing pillars of the Skills Development Fund focus on infrastructure development, equipment and tools acquisition, informal sector training, scholarship provisions to TEVET and strengthening the sector’s leaner support systems.  

Conclusion

Despite its challenges, the TEVET sector in Zambia provides many opportunities for lifelong learning. The sector offers opportunities to those who have not been to school as long as they are trainable to acquire skills. Social, economic and political stakeholders place high value on the sector to empower young people and adult learners with different skills to improve their productivity at different scales. The NorthSouthDialogue of Parliaments project is one of the steps aimed at finding solutions to the TEVET sector by including relevant stakeholders in defining ways forward. This political sphere is creating opportunities for effective training–industry collaborations through legal and policy realignments towards quality, inclusive and equitable lifelong learning.

 In one such discursive sphere the necessary amendment of the Zambian Apprenticeship Act of 1965 and its merger with the Skills Development Levy Act so that incentives are provided to the industry collaborating with the training sector emerged. The Apprenticeship Act of 1965 is outdated and under the domain of the Ministry of Labour instead of the Ministry of Higher Education, which deals with the TEVET sector. The creation of skills clusters to serve as advisory groups on skills gaps and mismatches are some of the approaches the international collaboration has ignited.

This article was published in the Zambia Daily Mail and NorthSouthDialogue Newsletter in Austria