Vocational Education in Sri Lanka: the Experience of Canada’s World University Service

March 31, 2012, 4:16 pm , Sunday Island.


An interview with Ingrid Knutson
By a Special Correspondent

We understand that you have been engaged in the field of technical assistance for a long time, working with UN agencies and others. Can you briefly describe your career before you came to Sri Lanka?

I have worked for the Canadian International Development Agency for nearly 30years working with civil society, bilateral country programs such as Haiti and Afghanistan and with the UN, World Bank and Organization of American States. Overseas postings to Ethiopia (Red Cross), then with CIDA to Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Washington DC/OAS and Afghanistan, have all given me a strong affinity with field realities and rural areas outside of capital cities. Having worked with Canada’s Privy Council Office, I appreciate greatly the governance and sustainability aspects of development work since it is a real challenge "to do good well". When I came to Sri Lanka I almost returned home to Canada after the first year of working intermittently but then the WUSC Country Director position came up for international competition and I applied successfully. Now I had work I could sink my teeth into.

Can you tell us about the WUSC Canada. When was it set up, how is it financed, and where does it operate?

World University Services of Canada (WUSC) is probably Canada’s oldest development organization with roots going back to student campuses and European refugee work after World War One. It was only after World War Two that WUSC came to Ceylon in 1953 for an international student seminar. Since then WUSC has been involved throughout the 1960s and 1970s with work on university campuses with students. I am thrilled to see the traces of that work today when I meet with senior government officials who remember WUS (not WUSC) work at Moratuwa, Sri Jayawardenapura, Peradeniya and University of Colombo. A Sri Lankan friend recently passed me a WUS publication on "non formal education" held in 1976 on University of Colombo’s campus.

WUSC is an education and training, not for profit organization. It is a membership organization, not a fund raising organization, so funding is largely dependent on international donors and of course there are good years and not so good years. After the tsunami WUSC had 12 donors supporting our work in Sri Lanka but that funding has largely finished today. Norway, Canada and UN agencies such as UNICEF and WFP provide funding to us today and the Ministry of Youth and Skills Development reimburses us for "tools of the trade" expenses from a Canadian food aid counterpart fund.

Every year over 400 Canadian students and university and college faculty members come together in Ottawa, Canada to review the work of WUSC in 22 countries around the world, in Africa, the Americas and Asia. Sri Lanka has traditionally been one of the most important countries for programming.

How long have you worked in Sri Lanka? Can you think of any highlights before your period?

WUSC geared up its operations in Sri Lanka in 1989 with what has become its flagship vocational training program called PRET (Project for Rehabilitation through Education and Training). It has had an unprecedented five phases of operation working with 30,000 people mostly youth and women in rural areas far from Western Province. WUSC has been active promoting vocational training in 19 districts of the South, East, hill country and North. For the past 10 years, we have been working in the plantations sector in four Central Province Districts. We support vocational training and skills development for youth to offer them opportunities for work off-estate, but also support improving the work environment on estates through support to occupational safety and health, along with other measures. In previous years the vocational training program was much bigger and operated at a time when the government was first establishing NVQ (national vocational qualifications). A highlight for us was being able to take this government designed NVQ system to isolated, rural areas. In the early days of NVQ, WUSC worked with the government Ministry of Vocational and Technical Education and its senior officials such as Dr. Piyasiri as well as VTA and NAITA Chairmen. It is always exciting to be part of something that is getting established and can make a big difference.

What is the WUSC work program in Sri Lanka. What is the level of resources allocated to Sri Lanka over the last five years?

WUSC was working on several projects with total funding post tsunami (2005-2011) dedicated to Sri Lanka of over $ 10million. This year our annual budget for our vocational training work is much more modest, closer to $ 1 million which pays for Sri Lankan staff in six offices (Colombo, Kandy, Jaffna, Vavuniya, Batticaloa and Badulla) and field programming with over 20 local partners, much downsized from previous years with over 50 local partners.

WUSC is involved in the field of gender and plantation communities and youth leadership as well as vocational training geared to poverty alleviation and job creation. There is considerable attention in our work paid to life skills and quality training. Our training cycle emphasizes that it takes more than technical skill to get a job. Having confidence, learning to work as part of a team, having some English understanding, being sensitive to diversity including women’s roles, on the job training of a practical nature, assistance with business planning including credit and tools of the trade, all contribute to improving the chances of employment and increased income earning capacity.

Are your programmes independently executed by you or are they implemented through other bodies? Can you give us some examples?

We operate programmes ourselves and in cooperation with local partners. It’s quite a symbiotic relationship. Our partners are critical to our field operations and have a good reputation in the communities they serve for getting work done cost effectively. Some of our partners are historic and well known to everyone in Sri Lanka and abroad such as Sarvodaya but there are others who are highly significant in their local areas such as Kavantissa in Hambantota, Miani in Batticaloa, ORHAN in Vavuniya. Throughout the years we have always included district level government partners ranging from VTA to Gems and Jewellery Research Institute and of course worked at the national level with the Ministry of Youth and Skills Development, its predecessors, and its key agencies.

Are your programmes especially directed towards women? What are the problems in getting women involved in vocational education?

Our goal is to generate income and employment for youth and women in rural districts. This can more easily be achieved by focusing on males who face fewer obstacles to employment. We believe that females must also be given opportunities to work in country to make Sri Lanka’s economy develop sustainably. If women can leave their families and home to go abroad in huge numbers to work as housemaids, surely cultural norms will ensure they can be offered more varied skilled work opportunities in Sri Lanka and outside their village. Females are better educated in Sri Lanka than in most countries so overlooking their work opportunities is a waste of talent and resources. There are severe skills shortages in Sri Lanka experienced by the private sector, a mismatch that some argue has contributed to civil conflict and youth frustration in all rural areas and ethnic groups.

So we work hard to reach our 30% female target. Our tracer studies follow up with all our trainees and indicate that employment rates are much higher for males than females after on the job training. We try and confront those obstacles to female employment and not steer females into traditional courses such as dressmaking and beautician work. Better income can be earned in the area of information technology/computers, tourism and hospitality industries and nontraditional female work, for example, in the construction trades –electricians and woodworking and furniture making. We have had some success in expanding opportunities for females to work which is especially important for the many female headed households in the country. Working on leadership activities, confidence building and counseling that involves parents and schools, can make a difference. Sometimes, small changes make a big difference. It may be difficult due to lack of mobility for many women to work as masons but we find they can use masonry training to do decorative work as sub contractors in their homes. Female electricians may not wish to work for company that has them on the road alone but they can be helped to find positions in schools, hospitals and offices that require an electrician on call.

What kinds of vocational education are you engaged in? Do you think there are overlaps with the work of other agencies?

A glimpse at our database will show that in the last 3 years we have been doing vocational training with 3500 trainees in 12 districts in the South, East and North. Another 400 trainees have been part of our plantation estates program in four hill districts. There are over 100 NVQ accredited vocational training courses in the country in Sinhala and fewer in Tamil although we are working to help Tamil curriculum catch up. The variety of courses is great but a significant number of trainees are signing up for the construction trades(plumber, mason, electrician, welder, carpentry, aluminum fabrication), for information technology courses and in the tourism and hospitality service sector. We continue to support a lot of mechanical and engine repair as well as jewellery fabrication.

We don’t overlap with the work of other agencies. There is no question that our local, not for profit partners in rural areas offer a service that few others do. Of course, there are many more private sector and government vocational training centres in the country constituting nearly 90% of all registered training being offered. Our special niche is that we operate in farflung rural districts, often with more females and differently abled trainees, places and people where there are fewer government and private sector training opportunities on offer. Other important, not for profit vocational training organizations such as Don Bosco, offer very good vocational training courses and we work cooperatively to make sure we do not do so in the same areas.

Most importantly we try to support courses for which our research indicates there are employment opportunities to ensure that trainees obtain employment or self employment. Our tracer studies over the past 15 years undertaken with every trainee six months after completing their on the job training help us with this determination including measuring income increases earned.

What kinds of vocational training according to your view are more appropriate to this country at this stage, and specially to women?

I think the government’s main priority sectors for vocational training– construction trades, information technology/computers and tourism/hospitality makes a lot of sense given labour market survey information available to us. These are areas that private sector representatives, such as the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, also identify as important. Of course there are other important fields such as health care, agricultural processing and light manufacturing including garments which offer a great deal of work for women. Many of these fields have considerable overseas demand for skills. With growing numbers of working Sri Lankans (approximately 1 in 5) going abroad to work, there is a need to be vigilant on domestic skill shortages. Every year40,000 people leave Sri Lanka in the construction sector and yet a 100,000construction workers are needed at home. There is a tendency to identify certain skills for women and others for men but in a modern, growing economy there needs to be greater flexibility. It makes me think of my mother telling me that when she grew up in Canada she could reasonably aspire to be a secretary or teacher but not much else. Now her daughters and granddaughters laugh at such quaint ideas and have more range of opportunity than we can hope to grasp with professions that did not even exist earlier.

What kind of collaboration is there with government bodies, such as the Ministry responsible for vocational education?

The Ministry of Youth and Skills Development is our key government partner and the regulator of vocational training registration and accreditation standards. It is led by a dynamic Minister, Dullas Alahapperuma. We are pleased that the Ministry brought together various complementary agencies – TVEC, VTA, NAITA – that really needed to be working collaboratively. All three of them are crucial to our success in rural districts. The districts in which we work have established vocational training provider consortiums that bring government, private and not for profit groups together under the leadership usually of the Government Agent. This is hugely important and hopefully decentralization will be possible to ensure government NVQ standards and services are more easily applied at the district level far from Colombo.

Knowing the vocational education system in Sri Lanka, what do you think are the shortcomings and what do you think are the areas to be improved?

In August 2011 Sri Lanka hosted a regional conference which brought together technical and vocational education training practitioners. It became quickly apparent that Sri Lanka compared to its other South Asian and East Asian neighbours had a well developed NVQ system. This is a huge advantage to build upon. At the same time there were two key shortcomings identified for Sri Lanka and other countries.

Much, much more work is needed to bring the private sector into the room. Vocational and technical training that does not lead to employment and meeting the needs of the private sector seeking skilled labour, is an exercise in frustration for all concerned and a huge waste. Every country in the world is struggling to do a better job of marrying private sector job needs with quality training but some do it better than others. The German speaking countries are often held up as a model of long duration where there is close collaboration between the private sector and training providers and government.

Secondly, there was unanimous agreement that the "branding" or "social marketing" of vocational training was pitiful. There is a strong preference for the professions that are known and well established such as engineering and medicine and work that is considered socially prestigious such as working for government. Yet a national economy needs so much more than that to function properly. Career guidance is often identified as failing to adequately assist young people, their families and schools to know enough about options available.

What do you think of the quality of vocational education in this country? Which areas need particular attention?

The NVQ system provides a strong basis for quality vocational training but the devil is in its implementation. First, there has to be a hunger and appreciation for quality learning and training rather than certificate collection. That means learning problem solving and practical skills that make one employable. Secondly, a test of employability is critical. Tracer studies of all trainees done six months after classroom, and then on the job training, is revealing. We learn what we are doing well and not so well. It helps us work with our partners and tell them where they are failing and how they might correct that.

Do you think that vocational education can be an alternative option to getting into universities?

Vocational training and university education, do we need both? When 90% of school leavers cannot find a place in universities and most university graduates are unemployed because they lack basic skills from a second language to computers skills to people skills and a flexible work attitude, the answer is YES! In Canada where most school leavers go on to post-secondary education, do we need vocational training more than university education? The answer is yes. For every one university graduate getting a job in Canada there are six community college/vocational training graduates getting a job. A growing number of Canadians when they complete their university studies go for technical training for a job. The range of options is vast from animation work with high demand in Hollywood to culinary arts including a tea sommelier course offered by the Tea Association of Canada with Toronto’s George Brown College and Vancouver’s Community College.

There are many development projects, small and large, which are being implemented in this country. These projects can be designed in such a way as to improve vocational education. For example, a hotel project can also have some components for the training of people in related working in the vicinity. Have you any ideas about this?

What Sri Lanka most needs now to further advance quality vocational training is a determination to get "all hands on deck". Government, Private Sector and "not for profit" organizations are all needed, small and large. The government sets the regulation and accreditation process and provides considerable training, the private sector provides the most important productive employment and training and the "not for profits" fill in some of the gaps to assist people who will not be able to access government or private sector training offerings. Having said that, we have not really experimented sufficiently and found common cause together. Indeed, what better place to marry tourism/hospitality skilled needs with training than in the place of work. It can happen and it is happening but more is needed. WUSC worked in the South with Kavantissa, a rural not for profit training organization and Jet wings to run a cooking course with five star kitchen equipment and jobs for those who graduate. WUSC worked in the North with Thampu hotel and not for profit training organizations, WDC and YGRO, to train staff.

HNB’s Yauwanabhimana youth program brings together various corporate partners from various industries including tourism (Aitken Spence), agro processing (Hayleys, CIC), construction (Holcim),automotive (DIMO), information technology (Dialog), together with British Council, University of Colombo and WUSC. Innovations are possible between various partners and there is now a road show going to the districts to talk to young people about thinking differently about career choices and the private sector and training and education.

This builds on earlier work between WUSC and the Hambantota Chamber of Commerce to support career guidance for young people.

Career orientation can highlight the employment potential and income potential of trades and running a small business that show the vocational education route is not necessarily the poor route.

Can WUSC facilitate policy improvements in vocational education, if the government so wishes? In which way can it be done?

Yes, by working with GOSL and ensuring success and key lessons are shared with GOSL. WE have done this as for example with the Gender Policy Handbook published in Tamil and Sinhala by TVEC with ILO and WUSC support which was a highly collaborative exercise.