The Metropolitan Chief Executive of Cape Coast, Mrs. Priscilla Arhin-Korankye, has urged Ghanaians to erase the perception that Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) was inferior to university and other forms of professional education.

She said due to the stigma attached to technical and vocational jobs, many people dismissed promising career paths in this area where employment abound with higher income as compared with a lot of white collar jobs.

In a speech read on her behalf at the 5th graduation ceremony of the Social Welfare Girls Vocational Training School in Cape Coast, at the Weekend, she said quality TVET was the only antidote to what she described as “the serious scourge of unemployment in Ghana today”.

The ceremony was on the theme, “Promoting self-reliance through vocational training”.

A total of 35 students who had completed a three-year training in dressmaking, catering, textile making and other entrepreneurial skills and had passed the National Vocational Training Institute (NVTI) examination, were awarded certificates.

Mrs. Arhin-Korankye expressed worry that the educational system in Ghana was biased for university education while many graduates do not get jobs after completing their national service unlike their TVET counterparts who move directly into the labour market.

In addressing the TVET stigma, she said a non-hierarchical system, for example, using the paradigm of “circles”, rather than “levels” of training, was needed, coupled with an all-inclusive approach to help people with interest in TVET to unleash their full potential.

She suggested that TVET was effectively linked to community, regional, and country based training opportunities to respond to the evolving market needs since the secret of many developed nations’ economic growth was their massive investment in human capital development.

She congratulated graduates and advised them to work hard and prove to the world that the education they had received was worthwhile.

The Central Regional Coordinator of NVTI, Mr. Patrick Adu- Sarfo, underscored the importance of TVET and criticised how society looked down on people who opted for it.

He advised the graduates to be loyal to their clients to help change the negative perception and make TVET more attractive and also pursue further courses to upgrade themselves and be abreast of current trends.

The headmistress of the school, Ms. Veronica Donkor, noted that the school, since its inception 27 years ago, had trained more than 2,000 people who had excelled and made impact on the society, an indication that that TVET was equally important in nation building.

She, however, expressed worry over the rate of drop out at the school with only 35 of the 75 students who enrolled in 2012 being able to graduate this year, a situation she said was probably, due to the inability of some parents to pay fees.

The school, she noted, through philanthropic support, completed and furnished a catering workshop and more assistance was needed to construct dressmaking and textiles workshops, a fence wall and solve several other problems.

She expressed gratitude to all stakeholders who supported the school in diverse ways and advised the students to be good ambassadors of the school.

Mrs. Barbara Asher Ayisi, a tutor at Wesley Girls High School, and an Entrepreneur, who presided over the ceremony, described the notion that TVET was for unintelligent person as ‘very wrong and worrying’ and called for paradigm shift.

Mrs. Ayisi, who is also the New Patriotic Party’s Parliamentary Candidate for the Cape Coast North Constituency, appealed to parents to encourage their children who wished to purse TVET and not to push them on career paths they were not interested in.

The Social Welfare Girls Vocational Training School was established in May 1988 as a remand home but later upgraded to a vocational training school.