Factors affecting youth accessibility to Vocational Education Training (VET) in Singida Municipality

Abstract

This study examines the factors affecting youth accessibility to vocational education training (VET) in Singida Municipality. Random and purposive sampling techniques were used to obtain a total of 114 youth enrolled, graduates and those who did not acquire training from VET colleges for survey questionnaires and 10 key respondents’ informants for interviews. Data were collected through questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews. Qualitative data were coded and transcribed and subsequently thematically analyzed, with regard to quantitative data: both descriptive and inferential analysis was done including the Likert scale and binary regression adopted to measure factors affecting youth accessibility to vocational education training (VET). The findings revealed that the age, household size, few number of institutes, awareness, readiness of youth was positively affecting access to VET. The study concluded that, youths who do not have any other opportunity of pursuing studies and ultimately get employment, need to have access to VET as one of the means of acquiring skills demanded by the labour market. The study recommends that, more efforts should be placed in attracting more youths to join VET studies as a means of increasing their employability by conducting mass awareness programmes on the need, availability and accessibility to VET. Also, efforts to increase the number of VET colleges in Tanzania should go in hand with extension of tertiary education loans provided by the Higher Education Students’ Loan Board (HESLB) to cover more VET programmes as a means of enabling youth to overcome inaffordability caused by large family sizes.