Mending broken dreams

Ishara JAYAWARDANE

A young man walks along the Mount Lavinia sea shore all alone, the garish sun beating down upon him. The sea is calm as he surveys the deserted beach. His heart is breaking as he thinks about his mother and his father and his siblings. How will he support them? He is unqualified and at a loss to know what to do next.

A woman walks along the Galle Road. Though she is surrounded by a crowd, she too is all alone with her pain bottled up inside of her. Tears well in her eyes as she wonders where her future is going. A high paying job, security and satisfaction are a dream. How will she support her family?

The Daily News met up with Senior Vocational Training and Skills Development Specialist Paul Comyn to discuss this thorn in the side of mother Lanka.

Q: What do you mean by vulnerable people in Sri Lanka as far as the education of the youth is concerned?

A: The strategy identified six priority groups as being vulnerable and one of those was disadvantaged youth. Basically the concept of vulnerability implies that people for different reasons find it difficult to gain employment and in terms of youth, it often relates to the level of schooling that they have, maybe they have not completed year 8 or not completed year 12.

They have dropped out of school and find it difficult to access further education and training or they have left school with very few skills that will allow them to gain employment and so they are disadvantaged in the labour market. The transition from school to work is not easy for those people because they have inadequate education and training but also because they have other vulnerabilities.

Maybe they have a disability or they come from poor households, which means they have to take whatever work they can find to help support the family which prevents them from continuing their studies or undertaking skills training or they are unable to start their own business because again they lack the skills, the security or finances to undertake such initiatives. So the concept of vulnerability in the strategy really relates to the employability.

Q: Is there a real need for a vocational training and skills development system in Sri Lanka?

A: From what I understand basically there are not enough training places for school leavers. So the vocational training and skills development system where people can develop technical skills, vocational skills separate to attending university such as the number of training places, are inadequate for the number of youth that enter the labour market every year.

One of the problems that exist is that many young people do not see vocational training or skills development as a valued option because often in the workplace the difference between the pay of an unskilled worker and a skilled worker is not so great.

The young people say; “Why should I spend my time and money doing skills training when I can just start working now as an unskilled worker and earn enough money maybe to live? . So that is a challenge and it is one of the things that is important in career information and career guidance. This is so that people can make more informed choices. Through this they can see that there is value in the long term from investing in education and training in the short term.

At the moment there is no well organized system in Sri Lanka for providing vocational guidance and employment counseling. The job net system of employment service centers is weak and we understand that the ministry of productivity promotions is looking to reestablish that network and reopen some of these employment service centers.

That is the missing link between job seekers and jobs. You need something in the middle - the intermediary to make the two things connect. There’s always going to be people finding work but if you have a job centre you make that process run somewhat smoothly.

Q: Can you explain to me the nature of these three areas you just mentioned: Tertiary, Vocational and Training provision? What do you mean by those terms?

A: In Sri Lanka typically when people say tertiary they think of higher education, university based education. But also tertiary education is a way of thinking of the three different stages of education and training: Primary education, secondary education and tertiary education. Tertiary is a general term. Within tertiary you can have vocational, technical and what they call higher education - which is degrees given by universities. Colleges of technical education that deliver three youth diploma programmes, would be part of the tertiary education.

But that is also included in what is known as the Technical and Vocational Education Commission (TVEC) sector. So basically what you are looking at is different categories that overlap, so vocational education and training is part of tertiary because it is post secondary. But these days a lot of vocational training and skills training can happen through the school system. That means it is part of the secondary education system but which delivers vocational training. These are not very clear categories because some overlap.

The ILO (International Labor Organization) is concerned more about educational and training that provides people with employable skills and prepares them to participate in the workforce to be employed. The ILO is less concerned about higher education because that is more geared towards the professions rather than skilled workers. In Sri Lanka the Technical and Vocational Education Commission (TVEC) is doing a good job in coordinating the provision of vocational education and training but it still has more work to do to bring in the various government agencies under a common framework and also to promote vocational education and training to industry.