Abstract:
The government of Sri Lanka incurs considerable expenditure on Technical and
Vocational Education and Training (TVET) system in the country and has made
significant progress over the past decades through different strategies. Although this
sector has been well organized to give opportunities up to degree level qualifications, the
sector engages with three major problems such as low enrollment, high dropout rates, and
a lower rate of job placement. Therefore, this study was carried out to investigate whether
there is a significant attitude difference between Advanced Level (A/L) students and
currently joined students towards the TVET sector. Eighty (80) students in TVET
Institutes and A/L students in Matara District were the populations of this study. The data
was collected through a questionnaire from all four TVET institutes, 10 students from
each TVET institute and 10 students from each Educational zone covering all four
educational zones. Independent Simple T-Test was used to compare the attitude
difference between the students in two streams. According to the results, there was a
change in variance between two groups but there was no significant difference in group
means. The standard deviation of attitude of currently joined students was 0.52 and A/L
students was 0.83. Accordingly, A/L students are having higher variance than the students
who follow TVET programs. This indicated that currently joined students are having less
variance towards attitudes in following TVET programs. Since A/L students are having a
higher variance in their attitudes towards TVET than currently joined students, TVET
sector needed to introduce appropriate actions and programs to change the A/L students
thinking pattern and make a positive image on TVET.
Keywords: Attitudes, Technical and vocational education, TVET
