The Barbados Vocational Training Board (BVTB) receives about 2 313 programme applications each year for its most popular courses, but only 115 places are available to trainees.
This disclosure came over the weekend from the BVTB’s director of training, Henderson Thompson, as he delivered his report at the graduation ceremony at the Lester Vaughan School.
Thompson told his audience, which included the 221 graduands and their families: “This means that on average, for these most popular programmes, we are able to accept only about five per cent of applicants. Altogether, including all of our other programmes, there are in any given year about 33 classes being run across the seven BVTB centres, with a total capacity of about 450 places per year.
“This great deficit between the number of applicants and the number of trainees accepted and enrolled is a serious matter that we must address urgently in order to narrow this gap. This is why you continue to hear repeated calls from the BVTB for land, purpose-built buildings and equipment.”
He identified those popular courses as Bar and Restaurant; International Cooking; Care of the Elderly; Housekeeping; Electrical Installation; Heavy Duty Truck Driving; and Cosmetology.
Thompson expressed the view that BVTB must continue to train people to assist the manufacturing sector, which has taken a battering over the years.
“We want to see more made in Barbados and even more produced in Barbados. We want business and industry to work with us, as we seek together to reduce our country’s imports and build back our foreign exchange earnings and increase our foreign reserves,” he added.
He gave the assurance that the institution would work even harder to collaborate with the construction and services sectors. This collaboration, he continued, would help to create the cultural shift here to fully embrace the relevance and contribution of technical and vocational education as essential to human capital development.
The director pointed out that BVTB was now a Barbados Accreditation Council registered organisation, and stressed that this was an extraordinary achievement. He disclosed that the board’s C. Lomer Alleyne Training Centre at Sayes Court, Christ Church, would be a hive of construction activity during the first quarter of 2018. He explained that under the Skills for the Future Programme, the multi-purpose classroom facility would be completed.
According to him, the facility would provide new space for a number of areas, including cosmetology, electrical installation, masonry and tiling.
The BVTB administers the Apprenticeship Programme, the Skills Training Programme, the In-Plant Programme and the Evening Programme. (BGIS)
