| Abstract: | The main purpose of this study was to investigate the practices and challenges of cooperative training at Catering and Tourism Training Institute (CTTI). The participants of the study were Catering and Tourism Training Institute trainees and industries which deliver in-industry practical training to enable trainees to have the required skills, attitudes, and exposure to real world. The data collecting instruments were questionnaire, interview and MoU and trainees’ contract document. After the reliability and validity of the instrument were checked, 158 questionnaires for trainees, 156 for the industry and 9 for the TVET institute totally 323 were distributed through purposive, stratified and simple random sampling techniques. Of these, 126 from trainees, 97 from representatives of industries (29 from 5 star hotels, 54 from 4 star hotels and 14 from tour companies) and 9 from the TVET institute representatives returned duly filled in questionnaires. The qualitative data were collected using semi-structured one-to-one interview. MoU and trainees’ contract agreement were the other data sources used for the study. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency, mean, standard deviation and weighted mean. The median test was also used to find out the opinion similarities of differences between the groups of respondents triangulating with the qualitative data analysis. The study found out that the practice of cooperative training at the industry side was not up to the expectation although this opinion varied between trainees and industry representatives to some extent. The involvement of industries on planning stage was to a limited extent. Even though the involvement of industries on implementation and evaluation stage was better than its involvement on the planning stage, it was not as expected. The study also identified that lack of financial sources, improper assignment of trainees, lack of integration between theories and practical skills and the availability of uncovered competencies as the main challenges of the cooperative training at Catering and Tourism Training Institute. The contents of MoU lacked occupational areas and activities, commencement and duration of the cooperative training, the right and obligation of the cooperative training, conditions for terminating the cooperative training, and performance monitoring and evaluation systems. The training institute also needs to integrate the theories that it gives with the practical training given in the industry, needs to visit the practical training sites regularly to track the CT, it need to facilitate the involvement of industries on planning, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of CT, the availability of uncovered competencies need to be fixed. The institute needs to work more with industries to implement all articles of the MoU and the training contract agreements. As well, the industries need to believe that the cost of CT be a part of investments to acquire wells killed manpower that assures service quality. |
