Why Disadvantaged Group are Excluded in TEVT?[1]

Dr. Lekhnath Belbase

Dr. Ram Hari Lamichhane

Introduction

In spite of several years of concerted efforts and different approaches of TEVT programs, poor and DAGs could not benefit because their access to TEVT programs was almost impossible. A research article (Subedi, 2004) claimed that women and other DAGs have had little opportunity in TEVT programs and as a result they have little job opportunities. The government-supported system of TEVT could not address the employment needs of economically weaker section of the society in Nepal (Sharma, 2005), despite having profound opportunity to play a vital role in reducing income poverty with a proper link between training and employment along with increased access to the poor and DAGs. A technical assistance report (ADB, 2002) states that access of women and DAGS to TEVT remained limited because the public technical schools were confined to only in few specific areas and private institutes were either too expensive or were logistically difficult to access. The report also highlights that the scope and access of vocational and technical education programs remain limited, thus constraining the potential for economic growth of Nepal.

Similarly, TEVT Journal (Sharma, 2005) states that the TEVT programs were required for the economically weaker section of the society but the government-support system did not appear to address adequately such target groups and employment providers. It is nevertheless, not only the matter of providing opportunities for education and employment but low school enrolment and high absenteeism among DAGs was a common scenario in Nepal. Similarly, Women were forced to spend most of their working hours in carrying water and fuel. This made their days longer. One of the key factors that limited access was the time spent by rural poor in development activities to meet their everyday needs (ILO, 1998). In Laos, distance to school (remoteness) was one of the major reasons for their children's school drop out (ILO, 1998). There was a challenge to educate a large number of people in rural areas in order to achieve sustainable development and goals of Education for All by 2015 (Gasperini and Maguire, 2002). It indicates that remoteness and geographical difficulties are the major obstacles in the access of DAGS to TEVT.

Similarly, a research report (Pant and Adhikari, 2002) states that the major obstacles to access to skill training programs for the DAGs were, (a) Education was not free in reality (b) Public schools were not able to provide quality education and poor parents could not afford the cost of private schools (c) Illiterate parents were not aware about benefits of education (d) Some ethnic groups, instead of valuing education, preferred to send their children for wage earning and recruitment as soldiers (e) There was no option of formal education for school dropouts (f) There were no awareness programs to send school dropout children to vocational/skill training institutions (g) Society has failed to value technical/vocational skills; technicians are not duly respected in the society (h) Women and Dalits were prevented even for going to school until recently due to traditional beliefs and attitudes (i) Topography also has been a hindrance for educational development (j) There was a lack of link between TEVT and general education so that people were not able to link technical skills with education.

The training achievements do not only rely on the candidate's interest because the skill-training programs are targeted to persons with academic degrees (SLC level education). The people with low qualification or illiteracy therefore do not meet basic requirement for training entry. Technical and vocational training needs basic levels of literacy and numeracy, and often an understanding of scientific concepts, without which training inputs will be compromised. Educated trainees often benefited more from training programs than their less educated friends. Therefore, basic education should be a pre-requisite to obtain entry into technical training programs (DFID, 1993). Poor people cannot bear the economic liabilities or training expenses so, there were low participation of dalits and female in TEVT (Lamichhane, 2006). Moreover, majority of the skill training programs are being conducted without identifying needs. For example, the need of the farmers could be to enhance skills on soil technologies, tractor mechanics and agriculture technicians but not agriculture education as a whole. Similarly, people were not attracted in TEVT because of the problems of seasonal unemployment, underemployment, low and declining rate of employability among the graduates, negative attitudes to manual labour and the co dominance of industrial sector by imported labour (Belbase, 1999).

It is therefore important for policy makers, donors, implementers and the people in general to see the efficacy of TEVT for providing access to the poor and DAGs to the programs and tie them up to the employment, which will ultimately contribute reducing income poverty in Nepal. In this regard, it is necessary to know the factors, which affect access of DAGs to TEVT programs.

Objectives

The objective of the study was to explore the factors that affected access of DAGs to technical education and vocational training.

Rationale

Government of Nepal has been working for skills development and skills for employment programs as a poverty alleviation efforts made to link TEVT with DAG but there did not exist many success stories. For future policy orientation, there was a need to explore hindering factors for the access to TEVT. This study provided information about impeding factors to access DAGs in TEVT and measures to enhance access of DAGs. Therefore, this study should be useful for TEVT policy makers, implementers and a variety of NGOs, multinational and bilateral development partners are working in poverty alleviation programs in Nepalin future.

Limitation of the Study

In this study, DAGs cover women, Dalits, and Janajatis who could not go to college level higher education due to their social, cultural, economical and educational background. Based on the TEVT graduates of last five years (2000-2004), this study covered the graduates of technical schools of Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training (CTEVT); both public and private technical schools having at least two trades and those who conducted vocational training (2 – 12 months skill training) and long-term technical education (above 12 months) programs. This study also covered the vocational training graduates of Skill Development Training Centres (SDTCs) under Department of Labour and Employment. Parents and employers of the sample graduates were included as the respondents for in-depth interview. The delimitation of this study therefore is that graduates of TEVT programs other than CTEVT schools or SDTCs and TEVT graduates from abroad were not included. Graduates of Small and Cottage Industry Development Training Centres were also not included in this study because they had wide range of short courses and it was difficult to trace the graduates.

Methodology

Literature review, survey questionnaire with graduates and in-depth interview were used as methodology of the study.

Eleven technical training institutes were sleeted as sample institutes. The detail of the institutes is mentioned in table 1 below.

Table 1

Selected Institutes for the Study

S. No / TTPs / Urban / Rural / Total
1 / PublicTechnicalSchool / 2 / 2 / 4
2 / PrivateTechnicalSchool / 4 / - / 4
3 / SkillDevelopmentTrainingCenter (SDTC) / 3 / - / 3
Total / 9 / 2 / 11

Population of the study was 6,831 (Technical education 2,852 and vocational training 3,979)graduates from 11 institutes. Out of them, 388 (Technical education 180 and vocational training 208) graduates were selected as sample randomly. In addition to above, six graduates, four employers and four parents were included to take in depth interview for qualitative analysis. The graduates, parents and employers were selected on purpose for in-depth interview.

Major Findings

The objective of the study was to identify the factors, which are affecting the access of poor and DAGs to TEVT. The researcher presented thirteen possible factors to the respondents to obtain their perception (Table 2). Besides these, the researcher asked the respondents about other factors, which can affect access of the poor and DAGs. Thus, the study identified the factors that affect access of poor and disadvantaged to TEVT.

Major factors affecting access of DAGs to TEVT

Table 2 presents the perception of respondents on major factors affecting access of poor and DAGs to TEVT. The respondents said that all the listed factors in Table 2 were affecting the access of poor and DAGs to TEVT. There were Likert type 5 levels rating scales from 'strongly disagree' to 'strongly agree'. The mean of the responses was greater than three in all factors. The factors, such as high cost of training, lack of provision for post-training support, geographical difficulties (few TTPs are in rural areas), lack of clear provision of employment, lack of adequate number of private schools offering trainer and the trainee friendly vocational training programs and lack of absolute poor and DAGs' access to relevant information about EVT programs, secured mean 4.36, 4.31, 4.11, 4.06, 3.96 and 3.88 respectively. Similarly lowest mean was 3.18 for the factor, which was in public school; vocational training programs have been conducted with TTPs convenience than trainees’ convenience

.

Table 2

Respondents' Perception on Major Factors Affecting Access of DAGs

Statements / Frequency of Respondents' Perception
Agree (4-5) / Neutral (3) / Disagree
(1-2) / Mean
n =379
Poor and DAGS cannot afford high cost of TEVT. / 316 / 35 / 28 / 4.36
There is no post-training support from TTPs for the graduates’ employment. / 321 / 30 / 28 / 4.31
Majority of the Technical Training Institutes are in urban areas, so rural people (mostly poor) do not have access to training. / 294 / 38 / 47 / 4.11
One of the reasons for lack of attraction of poor and DAGS in TEVT is inability to assure employment opportunities to the potential trainees. / 284 / 38 / 57 / 4.06
In private school, vocational training programs have been conducted with TTPs convenience than trainees’ convenience. / 276 / 46 / 57 / 3.96
Generally, absolute poor and DAGs do not get relevant information about TEVT programs. / 279 / 43 / 57 / 3.88
There is no transparent system in TTPs to provide stipend to the poor and DAGS. / 267 / 43 / 69 / 3.87
Vocational training programs are quantity based rather than quality and need based. / 267 / 51 / 61 / 3.87
Longer duration of the training does not allow poor and DAGs to participate. / 262 / 54 / 63 / 3.84
TTPs have not strongly developed and promoted poor and women friendly technical skills. / 235 / 74 / 70 / 3.67
Trainees selection system is TTP based. Therefore, poor and DAGS cannot get access even in the pre-training stage. / 243 / 50 / 86 / 3.63
Women have to be involved fully in household work, so they do not have spare time for training. / 218 / 62 / 99 / 3.55
In public school, vocational training programs have been conducted with TTPs convenience than trainees’ convenience. / 185 / 60 / 134 / 3.18

The factors of female participation in TEVT results identified in this study were similar with the findings of Nepal human development report (UNDP, 2004), which states, "The women's burden of work in Nepal (16 hours) is much higher than the global average for three reasons. First, reproductive work is much more intense because the home continues to be the centre of nature and socialization. Second, maintaining household is highly work-intensive, particularly during the peak agriculture season. Third, participation of women in Nepal in productive activities is one of the highest in the world".

Findings of qualitative analysis

In order to supplement the findings of quantitative data, the researcher collected the qualitative information through in-depth interview. The researcher asked the respondents; what are the factors affecting access of poor and DAGs to TEVT? How do they affect?

All the respondents said that the poor and DAGs had difficulty in getting information about training. Moreover, high training cost was another factor that contributed to limited access of DAGs to TEVT. An ex-Kamaiya graduate of masonry training from Kailali said, "The poor and rural people were unable to get information from newspapers and they are unable to pay training fee".

The above statements indicate that the poor and rural people did not have easy access to information regarding TEVT programs. It was because of the TTPs’ approach of promoting their training programs through national newspapers, which are far from the access of poor and rural people. In the district level, information is available at the district headquarters and that too on the hands of educated and well off section only. TTPs had not made use of innovative promotional approaches to disseminate information targeting the poor and DAGs. They still practice the traditional advertisement tools.

Two thirds of the respondents expressed that there was a lack of education and awareness among the poor and DAGs, and TEVT programs were developed only for higher-level educated person. An entrepreneur from Baudha, Kathmandu said, "There are many people in village and poor communities who can come for training if they are supported with awareness about importance of TEVT". A parent of female training graduate from Jhapa said, "The education level of Dalits, women and the poor is low and they have lack of knowledge about training which will result into their very low participation".

The above statements highlight the need for mass awareness program on TEVT. Similarly, there are regular programs in all technical schools on TSLC level. However, these programs are not relevant to the people with education beyond class 10. There is a lack of well-designed and regular TEVT programs targeting people with education level of class 10 or below. The lack of awareness program and quality TEVT programs are equally responsible to reduce participation of poor and DAGs. Besides, majorityof the respondents identified other major factors such as urban-based training institutes, mismatch between training programs and job market, to affect the participation of poor and DAGs. Similarly, rigid timing of training inhibits the opportunity for poor people and females who prefer not to be engaged in training during daytime. An employer from Balaju said, "The poor cannot afford training cost but if training programs are linked together with employment e.g. training in the morning and day time work in the workshop, they can generate income and are able to pay for training cost".

The above statement indicates that there is a lack of flexibility in the operational calendar while introducing the TEVT programs. There is a considerable mismatch between the programme operation of TTPs and learning needs of the clients. They have not considered alternative approaches to open opportunity to integrate more poor and DAGs participants in the TEVT programs.

One-third of the respondents said that blanket system of providing stipend to the females, Janajatis and Dalits benefits only to the educated and rich people. This had hardly been able to support the poor and disadvantaged communities. Cultural, social and attitudinal aspects were the other important factors adversely affecting the access of poor and DAGs to TEVT. An employer from a hotel said, "I give priority to females in all kinds of jobs but it is difficult to get females because there is still existence of social stigma".

The social, cultural and attitudinal factors are so intensely rooted that they adversely affect accessibility of the poor and DAGs to TEVT programs. The society does not have a positive attitude towards females involved in hotels and non-traditional occupations. There were some vocational training programs where participation of DAGs was high because they were entitled to get additional training allowances on top of free tuition fee. Such provision amplified the expectations of DAGs towards allowances rather than obtaining the skills.

The findings of this study related to factors affecting access of poor and DAGs to TEVT study were consistent with the study findings of Belbase (1981), ILO (1998), Panta and Adhikari (2002), Rai (2002), ADB (2002) and Sharma (2005). The major findings of all these studies regarding the obstacles to participate poor and DAGs in TEVT were: inability to pay high training cost, training without assessing target groups and market needs, logistics difficulty to access to technical schools situated in remote distance, negative attitude towards skill based manual work, low education level of poor and DAGs, social stigma to send females to training and unable to convince their parents and unable to prove link of TEVT with employment.

The findings presented above corroborate the Theory of Poverty as Capability Deprivation (Sen, 2000) which states that poverty is also the lack of option. In other words, either the absence of options for different training programs and post training support services, the prospective trainee is deprived of training opportunities or even if the person had such options due to absence of such services, he or she was unable to make use of the acquired skills. Socio-cultural factors that have psychological influence in Dalits and women keep them away from making such efforts (Bourdieu, 1990; Christian, 2002).