Technical and Vocational Education and Training

Technical and Vocational Education and Training

Technical and vocational training is offered at the national polytechnics, technical training institutes and institutes of technology.  Training in technical and vocational skills is also done by various government ministries and department.  Others are also offered at commercial colleges largely run by private investors.

In 2005, there were four national polytechnics with an enrolment of 18,116 students, 18 technical training institutes and 17 institutes of technology with a combined enrolment of 27,377 students, the youth polytechnics enrolled 22,887 students, comprising 8,691 males and 14,196 females.

A significant development has revived the once moribund youth polytechnics to provide skills training to post-primary pupils by proving some selected ones with resources to improve their facilities and training programmes.  This has seen their enrolments rise from 17,003 in 2001 to 22,887 in 2005 representing an increase of 35 per cent.  Table 5 shows enrolments in technical and vocational training institutions in Kenya.

The pertinent issues on technical and vocational training are: low enrolment; gender disparities; lack of modern equipment and facilities; non-marketable courses and curriculum, low funding and shortage of qualified teachers.

Teacher Training
Teacher training programmes are offered at certificate, diploma and degree level.  There were 29 public teacher training colleges and eight private school teachers in 2005.  In addition, there were three diploma awarding colleges training secondary school teachers.  Enrolment to the teachers college is open to Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) candidates who attain a minimum of C grade for certificate courses and C+ for diploma programme.  Certificate courses run for two years while the diploma ones go for three years.
In 2005, there were 20,200 students enrolled in primary teachers colleges while 2,080 were enrolled in the diploma colleges.  Other than the certificate and diploma courses, there are degree programmes in education offered at the public and private universities.  Graduate teachers are deployed to secondary schools, teacher training colleges and technical and vocational training institutions.  With parallel degree programmes offered at the public universities, a number of graduate teachers are also deployed in primary schools