Stakeholders share knowledge to help revamp courses at The Guy Morel Institute |29 October 2019

Participants in group discussion

The Guy Morel Institute (GMI) at Majoie organised a one-day workshop last week to assess various occupations to further develop its future programmes.

It was a chance, through this interactive workshop, for the institute to gather inputs for better understanding of these occupations in turn allowing it to revamp the courses on offer based on actual requirements of the modern labour market.

The participants came from government ministries, departments, agencies, parastatals, including the private sector.

The occupations that were closely assessed were office management, district administration, human resource, public finance management, general management and labour studies.

They had to describe the elements of their work situations and projections of its future among others, which at the end will help the institute to determine the competencies necessary to deliver efficiency, productivity and innovation in relation to the different occupations mentioned.

The chief executive of the institute, Shella Mohideen, who opened the workshop, said later that the GMI, being the only in service training institution, is required to re-validate all of its programme to suit the changing needs, competencies and attitudes of the different occupations.

She noted that they want the practitioners and the experts of the known industry, to say what are the moral skills, knowledge, physical, social, competencies and attitudes required for the modern labour market, so as to develop relevant courses.

“Even though we are very good at course development, the stakeholders, with years of experience in their fields of occupation, are in a much better position to guide on what type of courses that will be relevant for the changing labour market,” Mrs Mohideen said.

Mrs Mohideen said that after the workshop, the GMI will also do an international comparability assessment to see what are the new developments happening in the fields of the various sectors which will be put together with the inputs from the workshop for the validation process thus making sure that all courses developed for the country are actually relevant for the Seychelles workforce.

She further said that the GMI is also seeking to re-validate courses developed with the University Seychelles (UniSey), so as to obtain the intellectual property of these courses now that it has been separated from the university.

As the courses are validated for a five-year period, Mrs Mohideen appealed to all other representatives of the different occupations who missed on attending such workshops, to do so in future as they miss the chance of contributing their inputs which may have an adverse impact in relation with the course content of their specific occupation.

The workshop was facilitated by the quality assurance manager, Dr Shirley Marie, and the head of programme for Diploma courses, Nella Belmont, from the GMI.