Officers from TVET Authority and Mpesa Foundation Academy have in the past two days visited three TVET institutions on a familiarization and build partnership that will explore opportunities and areas of collaboration.

Mpesa Foundation Academy is currently working to align itself with the TVET sub-sector in the country with a view to have her graduates seamlessly transit to local TVET institutions upon the completion of the KCSE and Baccalaureate Career-related Programme (IBCP), which the Academy has introduced. The Academy is also looking at ways they can partners with TVET institutions to offer training and exchange opportunities for trainers and students.

The Academy sought the partnership of TVETA to make a fact-finding tours to various TVET institutions to get to learn about the TVET training regime, facilities, curriculum and the kind of programmes offered, and whether these programmes can be aligned with the new IBCP course.

In the last two days the delegation visited three Centres of Excellence (CoE) in STEM areas and toured their facilities and interacted with management and training staff of the institutions.

On Thursday the team toured Kiambu Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and Thika Technical Training Institute (TTTI) and today they visited Nairobi Technical Training Institute (NTTI).

The three institutions are Centres of Excellence and the government and development partners have supplied the institutions with state-of-the-art equipment and build the capacity of trainers so that they can be able to offer cooperative or dual vocational education and training system which is similar with what is offered in Germany and other developed countries.

In dual training, trainees spend half of their learning in college while the other half is spent learning practical lessons in the industry at three months’ interval of each. At the industry, the trainees are given practical orientation and assessed by industry assessors.

TVETA team was led by Michael Ambuli (Research), Andrew Too (Office of Director General), Nixon Zavani (Cmpliance and Enforcement), Peter Bor (Accreditation) and James Momanyi (Corporate Communication).

Mpesa Academy team was led by the Director Uongozi Centre Christian Gulzow. Other members were Academy Head of IB Programmes Jackline Otula, Head of Admissions Nicole Duhig and Manager Partnerships & Communications Imali Makotsi.

The MPESA Foundation Academy is a state of the art, co-educational and residential high school offering the Kenyan National Curriculum, International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) and the International Baccalaureate Career-Related Programme (IBCP). Learners are exposed to the latest technology as part of the day-to-day teaching.