The flag bearer of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr John Dramani Mahama, has said he will build on the strides his previous administration made toward revamping and re-positioning Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET).

Speaking at the launch of the 27th Annual Residential Delegates Congress of the Ghana Union of Technical Students (GNUTS) in Kumasi, the former president, who is leading the NDC to the 2020 elections, said he will move to rebrand TVET and make it more attractive to students.

“It is my intention, in the future government that I will head, to rebrand TVET into an alternative of first choice rather than the wretched path that students are compelled to take when all other doors are closed to them”, Mr Mahama noted.

Continuing, Mr Mahama said his administration will continue to clear the pathway so that the path toward technical and vocational education training from the basic level through the secondary level to the tertiary level, “will be an alternative of first choice and not an alternative of rejected students”, adding: “I daresay that we need our brightest and best to take the path of technical education, if we are to transform this country.”

The Mahama administration is credited for retooling a number of technical institutes and the conversion of polytechnics into technical universities.

The NDC’s idea to turn polytechnics into technical universities, he stated, was for very good reasons.

“It was about taking education, especially technical & vocational education seriously – making it an anchor of national development and an instrument of national transformation”.

Mr Mahama also explained that the conversion of polytechnics into technical universities was to help advance more vigorously, a process of repositioning them as strategic institutions that train personnel with high-level technical skills in the TVET domain toward the country’s economic and national development agenda.

The NDC flag bearer described the journey from HND to BTech as unnecessary, too long and unreasonably frustrating.

According to him, it was a real struggle for students to gain admission into the few higher education institutions, which offered the HND holder the opportunity for a top-up to upgrade their qualifications into a degree.

Source: Ghana/ClassFMonline.com/91.3FM