Dear Editor – After reading the response by Solomon Pita, Dean of STMS SINU, star no. 6628 dated June 24 2017; I decided to change the heading of my previous letter from, Are ITEC-SINU Trade Courses downgraded by Palladium to ITEC-SINU Courses downgraded by Palladium.
Firstly, the reason I decided to change the heading is because the dean of STMS proved in his response that the courses at ITEC are really good.
This was revealed by his little knowledge of the content and relevancy of the courses taught at ITEC.
It is sad to someone in a decision making position having difficulty in distinguishing between two different things and familiarizing between two similar things.
The dean also mentioned that the review was recommended by the industry.
This is a very normal thing to do. But what he failed to mention was who the main player of the course review here is.
The player’s ability and intentions are good to be critically questioned here. The player will do everything possible in order to get the needed support, even to the point of lying. It is sad to see that STMS has been seduced.
Sadly, STMS was easily seduced because it is clear from the dean’s response; he himself in his capacity does not have the relevant knowledge of the relevancy of the courses taught at ITEC.
He must learn to learn the basics of the courses so that his knowledge is relevant to the courses. Sadly at this point, Palladium quickly seized the opportunity and besieged the dean’s allegiance.
Furthermore, by having examining and understood this course review over the last 12 months, I did not see in the dean’s response what exactly was out of date as claimed by Palladium.
Claiming the meetings and, or claiming the things said by industry does not justify the courses were out of date.
What I saw in his response was he is being led to the realization of the things that were not done right.
Therefore, he quickly aligned himself with Palladium which claims that the low quality at ITEC was the result of the out dated courses.
However, what was evident around ITEC over the last 15 years was overwhelmingly contradicting to Palladium’s claims.
The low quality of the products from ITEC was not of what claimed by Palladium.
It was, however, sadly the dean has the largest contribution to this problem.
This is simply because he deliberately chose to ignore the fact which is the overcrowded training facilities.
Facilities at ITEC were built to cater for less than 15 students.
However, over the last 15 years the intakes have gone up to over 60 students.
Evidently the dean’s decision to recruit such large intakes and forcing the staff to train them in the overcrowded facilities was the most significant and biggest contributor to the low quality of products.
The dean is true about the changing technology.
However, in the last 5 five years I have also interact with some trade people in the industry who have graduated in the 80’s and 90’s.
I asked them if what they learned over 30 years ago were not relevant to the current practices today. Their responses were overwhelmingly the same.
The things they learnt over 20 years ago are still relevant and technologies used today have made their work even easier.
However, they were also very concerned about the large intakes at STMS because they noticed that some apprentices require extra coaching.
They told me that this have been caused by such large intakes by the school which Solomon Pita confirmed himself to be the dean.
Now let me summarize the above discussions by repeating some of the things and add other things I gathered from STMS over the last 12 months.
Having seen some course contents at ITEC and the things done in the industry, I can confirm that the courses and the things that are taught are still relevant.
In addition I have seen some of the contents of the current courses and what Palladium is forcing ITEC to adopt.
What I saw was they are almost the same. The difference I saw was the current ITEC courses were pitched higher.
But what I did not see was there was no evidence claimed by Palladium that made current ITEC courses out of date.
Therefore, let me say it again that Palladium’s claim was almost all 100% fictional.
Let me simply put it, Palladium is downgrading the ITEC courses. The good thing is some of ITEC staff have realized this downgrading.
I have also gathered some interesting information from STMS.
The shocking thing was Palladium is planning to remove ITEC’s latest automotive technology wheel alignment machine to their facility they are currently building.
In addition Palladium APTC staff have already removed from that machine’s computer all the latest models of vehicles and they still cannot fix the problem to date.
Sadly, Palladium APTC advisors have removed some very good training kits and units and are planning to do more but without replacements.
Before drawing this discussion to a close, l want to add to STMS’s partnership with the Skills for Economic Growth (S4EG) that dean mentioned.
Partnership is a good thing for development to a school such as STMS.
However, I also come to understand that S4EG was driven by Palladium.
This same Palladium has misled stakeholders about the review of ITEC courses. S4EG is the venue which Palladium uses to make its fictional claim.
As a result STMS was tactically seduced. Course review is diminishing. Palladium’s language has changed drastically from S4EG to APTC.
Finally, having learned many things about this subject over the last 12 months let me conclude with this partnership between STMS and S4EG.
S4EG was the cheapest tool designed and used by Palladium to demean the good courses and staff at ITEC.
This claim, however, was almost 100% wrong.
Palladium then cleverly laid the foundation of what was to come. The same Palladium went on downgrading ITEC courses by hiring APTC advisors, and simultaneously this same Palladium is now making ways to run its own classes using ITEC facilities and its own facility it is building next to ITEC training facilities.
Was this a coincidence or has there been some fluidity in the process?
Lote Motate
Honiara
