The Minister of Education, Dr.Matthew Opoku Prempeh has announced that government is to consolidate all technical and vocational education regulatory bodies and create a new Education Service Division with its own Council mandated to oversee skills training.

This means, the National Board for Professional and Technician Examinations(NABPTEX) and Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training(COTVET) will be merged to form one regulatory body.

The move is part of measures by government to reform Technical and Vocational Education Training in Ghana (TVET) .

“We want to create a specific Service like Ghana Education Service for skills training with its own Council and its own regulatory body.We want to fuse NBPTEX and COTVET for one efficient regulator to regulate both public and Private institutions that are into skills training to ensure that the curricula is relevant and consistentt with the right certification”.

The Minister also added that colleges of Education will also be assembled under one Ministry.

“We are pursuing a government decision that all those multiplicity of colleges of Agriculture, Nursing training colleges ,and colleges of Education, all those colleges must be centered around a specific Ministry”.

Dr. Opoku Prempeh said this when commissioning an ultra modern Electro-mechanical Laboratory at Koforidua Technical University .

Paul Perkins President of Amatrol ,the company that constructed the demonstration Laboratory explained to Starr News the Laboratory has among others a Process control System, Mechanical Fabrication, Hydraulics ,Robot Programming ,Table Top Mechatronics, Electrical Relays,and Rigging System used by industries hence students will get hands-on practical training to better prepare them for the industrial market.

The Interim Vice Chancellor of KTU, Prof. Smile Gavua Dzisi ,said the University is the only Technical University in Ghana with the highest Engineering Programs therefore the laboratory will help in providing practical training for students.

She said currently, the University has selected Mechatronics Engineering as its flagship program which through the Ministry of Education and National Council for Technical Education (NCTE), the KTU has won a grant from DAAD and North Rhine Westphalia in Germany to collaborate with HammLippstadt University of Applied Science to introduce and run mechatronics Engineering in KTU, first of its kind in Ghana.