Improving the Skill Component of Clothing and Textiles among Students in Second Cycle Institutions in Ghana and its effect on the Polytechnic Fashion student. A Case Study of OLA Girls, Mawuko Girls and Mawuli Senior High School in Ho, Ghana

Abstract

For a nation like Ghana to develop, it is necessary to pay much attention to Vocational and Technical Education. This is so because school programmes that place emphasis on theory courses or humanities are no longer useful to the nation.Graduates who offer such programmes find it very difficult to secure employment in the Ghanaian job market leading to a lot of frustrations on their part in the quest of seeking for non existing jobs. A clarion call therefore from the government of Ghana to all educational institutions in the country to pay particular attention to Vocational and Technical Education of which Clothing and Textiles is a component has become a necessity.

The problem therefore arises when this all important course is not given serious attention during the teaching and learning processes in the second cycle institutions making the students who pass out from those institutions deficient in practical skills.The researchers therefore sought to find out the causes of the production of unskilled graduates from the institutions and measures to be taken to solve the problems.The research design adopted was descriptive (qualitative) method. Data were collected from second cycle schools offering Clothing and Textiles in Ho Municipality and Ho Polytechnic fashion students in Ghana. The second cycle schools are: OLA Girls, Mawuko Girls, and Mawuli senior high school. Questionnaire and interview were used to collect data from the various students and their teachers.A total of 85 respondents based on the purposive sampling technique were used for the study. Out of this, 65 respondents were made up of students from the second cycle schools, 20 being teachers from the various second cycle institutions and Ho Polytechnic fashion department.Findings from the research revealed that though the Clothing and Textiles course is aimed at skill acquisition, not much attention is given to students at the second cycle level of education in Ghana to enable them gain such skills. This is due to insufficient teaching and learning hours allocated for teaching practical courses in Clothing and Textiles and lack of adequate teaching and learning materials at the second cycle institutions. This makes the students lack much skill when they enter the Polytechnic to offer the Fashion programme.

Keywords: Vocational, Technical, Education, Skills Acquisition, Second Cycle Schools.