The National Training Authority (NTA) Tuesday began a four-day training of trainer’s workshop on Technical Vocational and Educational Training (TVET) for the lecturers of NTA registered institutions.
NTA is the body responsible for regulating and registering all TVET institutions in the country, and the training brought together all TVET lecturers from NTA registered institutions.
The training is aimed at providing the TVET lecturers of NTA registered institutions to ensure effective and efficient delivery of TVET and quality assurance.
Speaking at the opening, Almamy Kinteh, acting director of Quality Assurance, NTA, said this was the third cohort of training of trainers they were trying to discuss with and come up with ways to improve the skills of trainers of TVET registered institutions.
He said the intention of the NTA was to make sure all registered institution trainers are at least exposed to a common methodology which would assess the curriculum and the preparation of the curriculum and also how they could produce the curriculum to enhance their teaching.
He said the NTA was established in 2002 by an Act of parliament and started operation in 2003, adding that they started implementing their programmes from 2006 onwards.
He said since they started their programmes their main aim had been to localize qualification as it was a mandate given to them and in doing so they launched a qualification framework called the Gambia skills qualification framework now running in various institutions.
Mr Kinteh added that they want to come up with their Gambian standards for the training to their Gambian needs but not compromising their international standards.
He said they were going to produce the right person at the end of their programmes, the right person that were fit for the purpose of both TVET and technical education.
He said for any registered institution, their slogan at NTA is, they want to make sure quality is owned by the training institutions.
He said they are doing their level best to ensure they execute their monitoring and supervisory role.
He said at the Central Coordinating Committee Meeting (CCM) they monitored the quality aspect happening in all the institutions and the monitoring and supervision was done by all the stakeholders that were in the field of education in the country.
Amadou Touray, coordinator of the workshop, said NTA is a creation of Government to regulate technical vocational education and training TVET in The Gambia.
He said people who had been designing curriculum and teaching materials in other countries went to the same institutions and went through the same training and over the years they had been depending on their programmes.
He said the exercise was one of their quality assurance mechanisms which were not simply a goodwill gesture to train trainers in institutions but was part of their strategic objectives of ensuring qualities in institutions.
