STUDY ON AWARENESS OF GENERAL PUBLIC TOWARDS NATIONAL VOCATIONAL QUALIFICATION AND TVET IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is mostly used both developed and developing countries which Provide good opportunities to prepare skillful labour with competencies (Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes) to the labour market. Greate effort has been made to strenthen technical and vocational education throughout the county by using various awareness programmes conducted by Ministry of Skills Development and Vocational Training and Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission (TVEC). Moreover Sri Lankan Govenment has recognized as equelent qualification for the respective field NVQ Level 3 and NVQ Level 4, to the G.C.E. Ordinary Level and G.C.E. Advance Level Respectively which Provid links with TVET system and general education. Nevertheless current situation is that no proper assessment process is being deployed to evaluate level of awareness of General public on TVET. Hence this study has made an attempt to find out the degree of awareness on TVET of General public. This study has been revealed that awareness among general public is prominent on some Vocational education courses such as ICT, beauty culture, hairdresser etc. Nevertheless awareness on some courses such as Agriculture oriented courses, Animal Husbandry, Automobile etc. which provides more employement opportunities both locally as well as globally are not up to the satisfactory level. Althogh Ministry of Education has invested a fair amount of sum on this programme in order to improve general education, not considerable effort has been made to encourage schoolleavers to enroll TVET system after their school education. One of the major fact is that the students and parents are not aware of the TVET and their attidutes towards the TVET is counterbalance due to the minimul awareness of the system.Thereby it is a timely need that due attension should be made by the government and relevant authorities to improve general public awareness on TVET courses which can be benifited the entire market.