Girls and Technical-Vocational Education (TVE)

TVS have been established with different objectives, namely to prepare the grounds for guiding the students towards employment or providing opportunity for continuing their studies. However poor quality of schools, lack of required capacities in society, and various gender inequalities in labor market have been serious obstacles in fulfilling the above objectives and thus have reinforced the conception that school outputs are undesirable. Aimed at studying this mentality scientifically, the present research evaluates the outputs of girls’ TVS in Tehran in 3 stages. "Pre-evaluation" stage consisted of surveying 236 experts, 7 factors, 45 indicators in "personal, social and economical" dimensions and compiling 16 judgment criteria in "desirable, fairly desirable and undesirable" levels. In "evaluation" stage, compiled factors and indicators, along with 3 questionnaires administrated to 226 participants including principals, graduates, and employers of employed graduates were used. Results showed that in personal dimension, quality of "achievement and dropout" and "alumni (knowledge, attitude, creativity, and skills)" were "fairly desirable" and "promotion to higher education " was "undesirable". In social dimension, quality of "fulfillment of educational-social goal" was "fairly desirable". In economical dimension, quality of "employment" and "entrepreneurship" was "undesirable" and "employer satisfaction" was "fairly desirable". Both of personal and economical dimensions were evaluated as "undesirable" and social dimension evaluated as "fairly desirable". Finally, quality of girl’s TVS in Tehran was evaluated as "undesirable". In "post-evaluation" stage, using the results of content analysis of open ended questionnaires of graduates and employers, matched with interviewing students, teachers and school counselors, the reasons of evaluation results were discussed and recommendations for improvement of present situation were suggested.