Strengthening vocational and technical education - Educationist

Koforidua, Aug. 1, GNA - Mrs Ewura Abena Ahwoi, Eastern Regional Director of Education, has called for the strengthening of vocational and technical training cater for the 60 per cent of junior secondary school leavers who fails to gained admission into senior secondary schools.

Mrs Ahwoi made the observation in a speech read for her at the 17th graduation ceremony of the Liberty Specialist Institute, a private vocational school that specializes in the training of caterers at Koforidua on Saturday.

She commended private organisations and individuals for establishing more technical/vocational institutions to complement efforts of government.

Mrs Ahwoi assured the grandaunts that with the level of training they had gone through and the skills at their disposal, there were lots of employment opportunities open to them and urged them to show acts of discipline in all their endeavours.

Rev Edna Ametameh, the proprietor said 23 of the 159 students entered for the advance level in catering, food and beverage service, 129 for the intermediate catering and 7 for intermediate fashion and designing courses.

She said the school was enforcing compulsory religious studies and computer training to enable it to turn out disciplined and wholly trained persons adequately prepared for the job market. Mrs Ametameh expressed her appreciation to the German Development Service for posting volunteers to the Institute to compliment staffing and other logistics and the German Embassy for setting up a computer laboratory for the school and Lette Foundation, a home economics school in Germany for constructing a canteen block for the school. The Deputy Eastern Regional Minister, Ms Susana Mensah said government was committed to vocational and technical education and had given the consent for Mathematics, English, General Science, social studies and computer studies to be made compulsory subjects in vocational schools.

She said the white paper on the report of the Education Review Committee, stated that there should be a "radically transformed emphasis on quality, quantity and financing of vocational education". Ms Mensah charged students of vocational institutions to develop moral values eschew all manner of indiscipline and read more books to make the government's laudable intentions on vocational training to succeed.