ABSTRACT
In the last decade, Kenya has invested massively in the Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) sector. The growth in terms of access has been unprecedented. While enrollment has expanded exponentially, access of TVETs’ graduates to decent work remains a national concern. Kenya’s implementation of the new curriculum, the Competency Based Education and Training (CBET) provides an opportunity to build the critical bridge between training in TVET centres and the labour market, and as a result, improve the employability of the youth. This paper contributes to this discourse by examining how value-based education drives the TVET sector in Kenya. We argue that the role of values and employability is under researched in Kenya yet emerging studies show that the industry, besides technical skills, prefer explicit exhibition of values among new employees. The focus of this paper is to review what we know about value-based education (VBE), including what they are and why they should form an explicit pillar of TVET education policy. Analysis of VBE and how TVET policy currently treats them, we observe that VBE deserves more attention in the TVET education policy. We propose a framework to support integration of VBE into TVET training.
Key Words: Values, Value-based education, TVET curriculum, TVET sector