Technical and Vocational Education Training has gained global traction as the means for creating opportunities for disadvantaged demographics and extricating them from poverty in the face of dwindling spaces in the formal sector of the world of work. It is the aspect of education that is aimed at applying relevant hands-on skills towards bringing about positive socio-economic changes and empowering disadvantaged groups within communities.
However, it has been established that these disadvantaged groups encounter many obstacles in their quest to accessing formal TVET. These obstacles indeed offered the contexts for jolting UNESCO-UNEVOC’s interventions with respect to how TVET institutions can better respond to the barriers and enhance the access of disadvantaged young people in TVET. For the year 2022, UNESCO-UNEVOC’S came up with the project,’Piloting New Modalities and Approaches in TVET Institutions to Become More Inclusive. The aim of the project is to make TVET inclined schools come up with concepts, developed into projects, towards creating a supportive and inclusive environment to cater for skills development needs of disadvantaged youth.
In operationalizing its aim, the UNESCO-UNEVOC had sent its call to TVET institutions across Africa and Asia to design and implement activities to pilot new approaches and modalities in TVET institutions in a real world context.
The Federal Polytechnic Ilaro’s team, made up of Eng. Jide Soyemi, PhD; Tpl Olasunkanmi Olapeju, PhD; Dr Olubunmi Banjo; and Dr Oluwabusayo Iriyboje, in response to the call ideated its concept around gender inclusion in vocations. The title of the project is Enhancing Inclusion of the Girl-child in Endangered Engineering Based Artisanal Jobs. The project was designed to be in two phases. First, delivery of sensitization workshop for managers of public secondary schools and female teachers of TVET based subjects, within the regional footprint of the institution. Second, the exposure of selected female students from public schools within the institution’s immediate region to automobile mechanical training, introduction to brief driving lessons by the Transportation Planning and Management department of the institution, and short flight training on drones by the institution’s Innovation Centre. The concept note was approved, after which it was scaled up as a full proposal and further approved by UNESCO-UNEVOC as the Polytechnic’s working document.
Ultimately, six institutions across Africa and Asia were selected to participate in the piloting project and awarded grants, the Federal Polytechnic Ilaro being the only Nigerian Institution. The Institutions are:
Mauritius Institute of Training and Development, Mauritius; UNEVOC Center of the Bilingual Technical High School of Nkolbisson, Cameroon; Vocational Education Department Institute [VEDI].Laos; Arusha Technical College Tanzania; Hue Industrial College, Vietnam; and the Federal Polytechnic Ilaro, Ogun State, Nigeria.
It is instructive to mention that a major spinoff of Federal Polytechnic Ilaro’s project, which operationalisation began last year, is that fifteen out of the female students that were sensitized and trained, have registered as trainees of the external stakeholders contracted for the pilot project in order to deepen their knowledge of automobile mechanics.
Further,it is worthy of note to mention that UNESCO-UNEVOC in Bonn Germany,after assessing the reports and outcomes of the projects from the six global institutions involved in the piloting project, resolved that Federal Polytechnic Ilaro’s project was the most outstanding. For this reason, the institution’s project has been adopted as a case study to be featured in UNESCO-UNEVOC’s next practical guide and a model for the world with respect to gender inclusion in TVET. Albeit the project was not meant to be one-off, the outstandingness of the Polytechnic’s delivery would further compel the imperative of a sustainability plan, which UNESCO-UNEVOC has approved and the Polytechnic’s Management is favourably disposed to.
The Polytechnic’s Management is proud of this feat and would continue to support initiatives aimed at sustaining the advocacy and promotion of the inclusion of girls in engineering based vocations, where they are disproportionately represented.
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