NBTE asks private VEIs to get accredited ahead of vocational education reform

The National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) has asked privately owned vocational enterprise institutes (VEIs) to seek accreditation in order to benefit from the federal government’s planned enrollment intervention.

Idris Bugaje, the board’s executive secretary, spoke to TheCable about Nigeria’s imminent reform for the technical and vocational education/training (TVET) sub-sector.

The education ministry earlier revealed its plan to pay citizens to increasingly enroll in the nation’s vocational schools for programmes in areas like carpentry, welding, electrical installation, plumbing, ICT, fashion design, and CNG conversion, among other skills.

The education minister Tunji Alausa had unpacked a tiered project to address Nigeria’s human capacity gaps with vocational skills that he said would reduce youth unemployment and stimulate economic growth in the long term.

He said the government will pay students to attend the schools, fund those schools through tuition fees, and implement hands-on training where master craftspeople from various industries will mentor trainees, with monthly payments for each student.

The minister said a monitoring system of 774 assessors, one for each local government, would ensure quality, while the ministry is to provide entrepreneurship grants to trainees at the end of their programme.

Based on the NBTE framework, structured vocational/technical education in Nigeria is administered by technical colleges at the secondary level, the VEIs, skill training centres (STCs) at the sub-tertiary level, and polytechnics at the tertiary level.

Bugaje said the NBTE is actively collecting data on the VEIs in Nigeria, requiring them to get accredited if they will be factored into Nigeria’s intervention and reform efforts around vocational learning.

To be accredited, the VEIs must meet specific standards for facility, equipment, and personnel, which are outlined on the NBTE website.

Bugaje encouraged institutions to apply online, removing the need for physical visits to the NBTE headquarters in Kaduna.

Once accredited, he said VEIs will be assigned to appropriate sectors and recognised certificate awarding bodies, such as the Computer Professionals of Nigeria (CPN), for vocational enterprise institutes that offer training around software development and ICT.

Bugaje said the NBTE is digitising its quality assurance processes, with plans to use private consultants for monitoring.

He encouraged skill training centres in the informal sector to formalise their operations by applying for an NBTE accreditation.

“Let them write to the NBTE or visit our website and apply to get accredited. That way, they can buy into this federal intervention. Only institutions accredited by the NBTE are going to be beneficiaries,” he said.

“We shall assign them an awarding body so that the certification system is the same across the country.

“Instead of allowing every vocational school to award their own certificate, we have the National Skills Qualification of levels one to nine. This will improve VEI performance in standard and quality.”