Towards achievement of sustainable development through Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) : a case of middle level colleges - Kenya

Achieving sustainable development has been very elusive especially in the developing countries. This is as a result of poor infrastructure, poor governance, unutilized resources, unaccountability, lack of transparency and lack of skilled human capital which in return hinder national development. Middle developed countries like the Asian tigers, such as Singapore, Malaysia, and other East Asian countries have managed to attain economic sustainability and development through utilizing policies which emphasized Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in their learning institutions and also through Knowledge Management (KM)which is a relatively new concept in both information and industrial world which has led to knowledge getting value from the data and information and thus in the path to the realization of Millennium Development Goals {MDG's}. Knowledge management (KM) has further led to a shift towards organizational development, intellectual capital management, and competence management. The current Education system in Kenya is exam oriented and does not provide any functional skills because it encourages rote learning, drilling of the learners and this will eventually lead to mechanical learning, and eventually lead learning not to be learner centered and creativity is not encouraged. The learning institutions eventually churn out learners who lack functional skills and lifelong employability hampered and some will even resort to uncouth ways of acquiring wealth. This paper therefore, proposes that the curricular be modified so as to meet the requirements of Vision 2030 which posits be a creation, adaptation and usage of knowledge which will become part of formal instruction. It also intends to establish how knowledge management can be utilized so as to achieve sustainable development through TVET in Kenya and in the long run curb challenges emanating from inappropriate training methods which lead to non functional education and lack of equity in some knowledge supply chains resulting in lack of lifelong employability.