A MODEL FOR ENHANCING THE QUALITY OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION GRADUATES THE COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGICAL STUDIES, KUWAIT, AS A CASE STUDY
INTRODUCTION:Nowadays, the increased demand and rapid change in modern workplace has placed a great pressure on educators and industries to employ highly skilled and independent creative thinkers. High school and vocational colleges create an opportunity for students to explore academic preference and plan their pathway for either future education or a specific career. (Lichtenberger E. et. al. 201 3) Learning in vocational and technical colleges and workplace are considered the two main ingredients of vocational education. (Schaap, H. et.al. 2011)In the 21st century, workers require skills such as decision making, solving real work problems, time management, risk taking and communication skills in order to be accepted to work in industries. (Robinson, Garton, Vaughn, 2007).Students in vocational and technical education colleges need to incorporate knowledge, skills and positive attitude (Baartman and De Bruijn 2011) while they present need to develop and enhance a recognised identity (Achtenhagen and Grubb 2001) Students need to know about organizational structure, labour market required knowledge, skills and attitudes, job seeking and job keeping skills. They also need to understand how to gain and utilise information, develop their skills, solve real work problems, manage and adapt technology that is mostly used in related industry. (James R. 2005) Therefore, researchers have suggested that the future of technical education should be flexible enough to prepare students for both industry and college simultaneously (Roberts Ball, 2009).Through Total Quality Management (TQM) and various modes such as up gradation of graduates as clients and meeting the customer requirements, the importance of delivering qualified vocation and technical education is measured in previous studies. The professionals who are well versed in Technology should know how to apply these concepts. In turn, there must be notable changes in the curriculum of industrial technology with special reference to technical management subjects. Sarapin and Vorvoreanu (2000) stressed the importance of terming "Supervision" as "Supervision and team work building' However, other researchers focused on improved curriculum standards since they firmly believed that vocational education must meet students as well as the industrial requirements. Further, the strengths and limitations of the existing curriculum should be eval uated (Yildirim and Simsek, 2001) In spite of the discussion about the variations of issues, the consensus is on the objectives of forging vocational and technical institutions, i.e. ensuring that the students graduating from such institutions possess the required knowledge, skills and attitudes to sustain the market place; the acquisition of knowledge, relative to the purpose and objective of the organization, management development system, organizational challenges, acquisition of skills in reference to task performance, communication and planning and acquisition of attitudes in terms of respect, appreciation and honesty.Several authors and organizations have discussed the issue of quality of Technical and Vocational Education Training(TVET) (National Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training development, 2006, Inter Agency Working Group on TVET Indicators, 2012) TVET can be defined as "the totality of characteristics of a learning programme and of its provider, through which the expectations of the beneficiaries and the quality standards are met (Law no.87/2006, Quality assurance in education Law P.2)".In its turn, the national quality assurance Framework in TVET consists of those principles, methodologies, procedures, actions and evaluating instruments through which quality in TVET is assured, at both levels (system and suppliers).It is worth mentioning that the quality principles are based on the European Common Quality Assurance Framework in VET model which take into consideration the five elements which are namely, Methodology (e.