OP-Ed
Over a million candidates will have written their Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) and Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) by the end of 2023 Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB) cycle and all need a seamless transition to their respective next academic level.
When UNEB releases results for both levels, it’s a beehive of activity among parents, students and career guidance practitioners as they fight tooth and nail to bridge the transition information gap for the two levels.
A few opinion articles about the transition are published and handful radio and television presentations are made but not enough to spread the transition information far and wide across the country as evidenced by those who enroll for Uganda Certificate of Education, Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education and Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) in subsequent years.
At pamoja careers services, we do run a daily TVET campaign reinforced with more engagements during our annual national careers week celebrations.
During these engagements, the urgent need for careers education services is evident among the audience since access to these services is limited across the country.
I do call upon all TVET stakeholders to join efforts and we launch a national TVET campaign that will inform the general public about formal and auxiliary TVET learning opportunities in the country as per the TVET policy 2019 hence greatly increasing the TVET student share.
Across the globe, countries do carryout TVET campaigns to increase enrollment by addressing societal perceptions among others. Rwanda is currently running Nanjendi TVET as a national TVET campaign and also Ghana a few months back had My TVET spearheaded by the first lady.
With the able TVET leadership at the ministry of education and sports, technical support from Government citizen Interaction Centre and development partners, I strongly believe that it’s possible to craft and launch a national TVET campaign soon because the campaigns after release of results are uncoordinated, underfunded, not inclusive and are short.
To turn the over million students into a reliable and quality human capital base, an early campaign is a pre-requisite for formal and auxiliary TVET opportunities to be harnessed.
By Mulihi Bumali.
The author is a TVET Teacher & Champion at Pamoja Careers Services.
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