• Reference: P-GH-IAE-001
• Approval date: 20/06/2012
• Start date: 20/06/2013
• Appraisal Date: 15/08/2011
• Status: OngoingOnGo
• Implementing Agency: GOVERNMENT OF GHANA
• Location: GHANA

This is a specific investment project which will assist in financing the implementation of agreed reform to increase access and quality of TVET delivery in Ghana. Government policy allows three types of operations:

(i) general budget support;

(ii) sector budget support; and

(iii) investment project. The option of an investment project implemented within the existing SWAP arrangements was favoured because the Government has not yet elaborated a comprehensive and costed strategic plan for TVET subsector prepared through a fully participatory process to guide the implementation of sector support operation. In addition, the monitoring and evaluation framework required to assure results for budget sector operation is yet to be developed.

The project has the following components

Component 1: Expanding equitable Access to TVET); Component 2: Building Human and Institutional Capacity for TVET; Component 3: Improving Quality and Relevance of TVET and component 4: Project Management

Project cost and financing arrangements

The total project cost is estimated at UA 77.7 million. This amount is net of taxes and duties, of which UA 59.6 million (77%) is in foreign currency and UA 18 million (23%) is in local currency. The cost estimate includes a 7% physical contingency for works category. Price escalation has been calculated based on 2.5% annual price increase for foreign currency and 3.0% for local currency throughout the five-year implementation period for all categories of expenditure. For the purpose of costing, all items have been priced in United States Dollars and converted into UA at the exchange rate applicable for the month of November 2011.

Component 1: Expanding equitable Access to TVET.

The component will support interventions that aim to expand equitable access to TVET in the formal and non-formal TVET. The component will be implemented through two subcomponents.

Sub- Component 1: Increasing the participation of disadvantaged groups in TVET

The sub component will finance the following interventions; A bursary scheme for 1,537 disadvantaged students with particularly focus on female students and stipends for 2,500 apprentices. As part of the project the existing system for allocation of apprentice scholarship will be refined with the view of making it more equitable and targeted. A role model program to encourage female student to join TVET will be developed and implemented at the both the junior and senior secondary level. As part of this component, financing will be provided for the administration of the bursary scheme. Government will also be required to develop and approve an equitable and fair mechanism for ensuring that bursaries reach the targeted groups. Hence, the beneficiaries of the bursary will be selected based on a specific criterion-oriented process that seeks to provide equitable access for participation of female students and those from poor households. Sixty percent (60%) of the scholarship will be allocated to female students. In order to improve on the information flow regarding the scheme, the project has provided fund for advocacy and marketing. The project will also provide funds for government to undertake an Impact evaluation study evaluating the financial (bursary scheme) and the non-financial incentives (role model program and guidance and counseling) and their effectiveness as far as increasing the participation of girls in TVET is concerned. The Impact evaluation will be supplemented by the tracer studies. The results of the study will guide government decision on the intervention appropriate or the right mix for to scaling up.

Sub-Component 2: Strengthening of teaching and learning environment and the capacity of TI's

There are thirteen (13) technical institutions being targeted under Component 1 as follows; Two (2) polytechnics, one (1) public TVET instructor training institute and, ten (10) out of the thirsty six (36) technical institutions under MoE. The beneficiary institutions were selected on regional balance basis. These institutions will be expanded and upgraded to bring them to standards required to produce high quality technical and vocational skills required in the Ghanaian economy. In addition to other productive sectors of the economy, the institutions will also focus on producing skilled labour for the oil and gas and the related fields of study. In response to the above, the sub component will finance the following interventions: Strengthening of the teaching learning environment and capacity of 13 existing technical institutions which are (10) TI's, College of Technology Education Kumasi -University of Education Winneba (1) and two (2) Polytechnics. Supply of a arrange of modern equipment and inputs, ICT equipment, Internet connectivity, modern teaching aids, sports facilities, reference textbooks, improved water and sanitation, improved electricity and solar power systems

Component 2: Building Human and Institutional Capacity for TVET.

The component will support interventions that aim to build human and institutional capacity of COTVET and training institutions involved in the delivery of TVET. The component will be implemented through two subcomponents.

Sub- Component 1: Strengthening of human and institutional capacity of TVET Institutions.

The sub component will finance the following interventions; refresher training programme for pedagogy for 150 TVET instructors, training of 500 mastercraftmen to support skills delivery in the traditional apprentice program; design and implementation of a management course tailored to the peculiarities of TVET to benefit 50 managers of TIs and training of 25 (20 for Masters level and 5 PhD) faculty members at the instructor training college to attain the minimum of master's degree required to teach in an institution of that nature.

Sub- Component 2: Strengthening of human and institutional capacity for policy and quality assurance for TVET.

The sub component will finance the following interventions; Provision of office space for COTVET to house the secretariats that will make COTVET functional, support to the preparation of a costed strategic plan to guide the delivery of TVET and the strengthening M&E systems and TVET information systems at COTVET. In addition, the project will finance the training of staff of COTVET in selected areas of TVET policy, planning, advocacy, budgeting, information systems, impact evaluation curriculum development and quality control.

Component 3: Improving Quality and Relevance of TVET

The component will support interventions that aim to improve the quality and relevance of TVET delivery. And will be implemented through two subcomponents.

Sub- Component 1: Improving quality of TVET delivery

The sub component will finance the following interventions: Supporting the development curriculum through expansion of CBT programs CBT to cover three more trade areas. Review of instructor trainers' curriculum to align it to the CBT delivery mode and the demand of industry. In addition, the project will finance the development and operationalization of the qualification framework with a view to recognition prior learning. It will also finance the development and operationalization of the registration and accreditation mechanism for training institutions with the view to enhancing the quality control mechanisms for TVET.

Sub- Component 2: Strengthening the relevance of TVET

The sub component will finance the following interventions: Support to institutionalisation of production units using demand driven competitive investment grants. As part of the project, a fair criteria for accessing these investment grants will developed the criteria will be modelled along the lines of Skills Development Fund. It will also support the setting up of career guidance and counselling units in beneficiary institutions and training of core counsellors. In order to gauge the relevance and external efficiency of TVET delivery, the project will finance the development and institutionalisation of a system for tracer studies and their institutionalised at COTVET. Furthermore, it will support the institutionalisation of entrepreneurship training through instructor training and the development and implementation of a student's business model. The development of the student model will be part of the initial activities of the project.

Component 4: Project Management

This component will provide the necessary support for the effective implementation of the project through the COTVET and other partner agencies. To that end, the project will finance the following:

(i) Impact evaluation study,

(ii) Project staff salaries, technical assistant honoraries and other activity allowances;

(iii) External and local travel costs;

(iv) communication and postage;

(v) Project coordinating office costs;

(vi) Equipment running costs and maintenance; (vii) Stationery (viii) audit cost and (ix) project monitoring costs, (x).Consultants for MTR, (xi) Various Consultants (e.g. to prepare operations manual)

The development objective of the project is to support the development of high quality middle level technical and vocational skills needed in the Ghanaian economy. The project addresses a key development issue of human capital development, through increasing the capacity of the country to produce high calibre technical skills. The project has three specific objectives. These are:

(i) Expanding equitable access to public institutions targeting females and rural poor,

(ii) Improving relevance, and quality of TVET delivery, and

(iii) Improving management at the coordination level (COTVET) and school based institutional management.

The project will contribute to easing the tight financial constraint slowing down the pace of TVET reform in the country. Tight financial resource constraints have limited the speed of reform of the TVET in Ghana. Funding to TVET is inadequate even though the per capita expenditure per student enrolled has increased from GHC136 in 2006 to GHC 498 in 2010. Salaries constitute over 80% of the budget allocated to TVET leading to crowding out of other important expenditure for inputs to improve quality. While TVET is about 3.5 times more expensive than general secondary, the allocation per student per term to support the teaching and learning cost net of teacher cost to TVET institution is less than two (2) Cedis per student per term compared 4.5 Cedis for secondary. With regard to development expenditure for TVET, GoG spends about 200 million dollar on the entire education sector. This funding falls far short of the estimated USD 450 million required by the TVET subsector alone to bring the GoG institutions to acceptable levels. Due to this funding situation, GoG is unable to implement key elements of the reforms in TVET subsector. In line with the HEST strategy, the project will provide the much-needed financial and technical support with a view to deepening the reform of the TVET subsector.

The Ghanaian labour market is characterized by a quantitative and a qualitative mismatch of skills supply and demand. Employment growth averaging about 3.1% in the past decade lags behind economic growth averaging 6% and labour force growth averaging 5.8% in the same period. Lack of structural transformation of the Ghanaian economy has constrained the development of new productive employment and further utilization of the labour force. Close to 68% of the economy are self-employed with no employee, thus the prospects of generating additional jobs or employment opportunities for the growing youth is very low. The situation is accentuated by higher population growth rate averaging 2.7% in the last decade, reduction in public sector jobs, contraction of private sector jobs, an education system that eliminates large numbers of youth at two key transitional levels i.e. junior secondary school and senior high school creating a pool of unemployed and mostly semi-literate youth with unemployable skills. In addition, the job market has limited absorptive capacity to absorb over 300,000 graduates from tertiary institutions every year. Moreover, the graduates produced are perceived by employers to be technically incompetent and unsuitable for the world of work due to the mismatch between the training and needs of the labour market. The result has been the ascendancy of open unemployment of about 21% among university and polytechnic graduates. In response to the issue above, Bank financing will support curriculum review, improvement of the learning environment and increasing the capacity of TVET institution to train graduates with the ability to create jobs. In particular, it will finance the development and implementation of a student's business model with the view to enhancing the entrepreneurial abilities of TVET graduates.

The changing structure of the economy in favour of service and the industry sectors presents an immense opportunity for the skills development. An analysis of the sources of employment in Ghana indicates that agriculture and the informal sector continue to be the major source of employment even though their share of employment has been declining over time. The annual employment elasticity for the agriculture sector is less than unit 0.57 compared to 2.12 and 1.22 for industry and services respectively. Consequently, the services sector is the second largest source of employment after agriculture. The growth in demand for quality TVET graduates for the service sector is projected to grow at about 20% in the medium term. This growth presents an immense opportunity for economic growth and employment particularly in the tourism, ICT, light industry based on textile and garments and value addition to metallic and non-metallic minerals. However, employers in Ghana repeatedly cite lack of specific skills as a problem. Companies and manufacturers claim they don't have the required numbers of skilled workers and technical personnel needed for increased production. Hence, GoG needs to urgently address the quality challenge in the delivery of TVET if it is to position itself along a competitive edge in a rapidly changing economic environment. The Bank's contribution to addressing the challenge of quality of skills delivered by Ghana's TVET system and supply of skills targeting trades related to the potential areas of employment growth is at the core of the proposed intervention.

The project will contribute to the achievement of the following key outputs of the TVET reform:

(i) preparation of a costed strategic plan to guide the development of skills in Ghana;

(ii) increasing the supply of high caliber middle level technicians and TVET instructors;

(iii) reviewing the instructor training curriculum to bring it in line with the Competency Based Training (CBT),iv) reinforcing the capacity of the Council for Technical Vocational Education and Training (COTVET) which is mandated by the (COTVET) Act 178 of 2006 to co-ordinate and oversee technical and vocational education training in the country and to provide for related matters,

(v) operationalization of the prior learning mechanism and the accreditation system for TVET,

(vi) developing an impact evaluation mechanism for TVET and institutionalization of tracer studies within COTVET; and

(vi) increasing the participation of marginalized population in TVET, especially female students and those from poor households.

AMISSAH-ARTHUR Efua Chrissie - OSHD2

Finance source	Amount
ADF	UAC 70,000,000
Total	UAC 70,000,000