To face future challenges:

Develop a qualified workforce

by Lionel WIJESIRI

Any right thinking person will agree with Youth Affairs and Skills Development Minister Dullas Alahapperuma on his recent comments in the Sunday Observer that our education and political system had focused attention only on university education and that this was one of the biggest mistakes in our history.

As a result, he said, white collar jobs were highly recognised while other jobs were undermined. President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Government intend to correct this anomaly and produce a skilled youth force before long, he said.

It is an axiom that in the past 50 years, economies around the world have seen rapid changes.

The role of technology has altered and grown, the scope and nature of available employment have altered, and international competition has increased. Many countries have also faced significant changes to their political circumstances. Sri Lanka has experienced both kinds of change.

When such changes take place in a country's economic and political spheres, the national education and training system needs to respond quickly and flexibly to these emerging needs. It needs to retrain and re-educate individuals to face the new challenges.

The system also needs to recognise previous experience, so that re-training and re-education can build on the learning that this has given rise to.

Challenges

Students undergo vocational training

The present Government, as Minister Alahapperuma says, views the system of vocational education, training and qualifications as crucial in preparing individuals to meet the challenges of the future. In the early 90s, when President Rajapaksa held the portfolio of vocational training, he presented the Vocational Training Authority Bill with a program with radical changes to the training system. He took tertiary training to rural areas as well.

The program was expected to ensure that the changes could improve the quantity and quality of learning opportunities and make learning more relevant to employment needs.

The system was also designed to make it easy to respond to changes in requirements, the idea being that it would be easy to re-combine existing standards, update existing standards or to create new standards where these were components of qualifications.

Vocational qualifications

Let us consider the qualifications that make up our national system of vocational qualifications.

There are various government institutions under the Ministry of Vocational and Technical Education offering various training programs: TVEC, HRDC, NITE, DTET, VTA, NAITA, CITA, INGRIN Institute of Printing, NIBM, CGTTI, HRDC and CITI.

Several national vocational qualification courses are conducted by the Vocational Training Authority. There are seven levels of qualifications from Level 1 to Level 7. The National Certificate for Level 1 recognises the acquisition of a core of entry level skills. National Certificates for Levels 2, 3 and 4 recognise increasing levels of competencies. Level 4 awards qualifications for full national craftsmanship. Levels 5 and 6 are a national diploma and recognise the increasing levels of competencies ranging from technical level to management level. Level 7 is a Bachelors Degree or equivalent. There are 37 technical colleges in Sri Lanka. These institutions are managed by the Department of Technical Education and Training which functions under the Ministry of Skills Development, Vocational and Technical Education. They offer national certificates and advanced diplomas in engineering technician, engineering craft and business studies.

The Sri Lanka Institute of Advanced Technical Education (SLIATE) has an Advanced Technical Institute in every province for Engineering and Business Studies. At present it manages and supervises 10 separate Advanced Technical Institutes and seven sections housed in the technical colleges under the Department of Technical Education and Training to conduct higher national diplomas and national diplomas.

There are a number of other career options: for example, German Technical Training Institute, Moratuwa, National Institute of Business Management (NIBM), Sri Lanka School of Agriculture, Sri Lanka Law College, Sir John Kotelawala Defence University Academy and the Open University of Sri Lanka.

It is obvious that we have a reasonably wide spectrum of vocational education and training facilities for the youth. So, what has gone wrong? Why did we fail to develop the requisite number of qualified mid-level and low-level technical and vocational personnel?

NQF

We urgently need to do a proper evaluation of the purposes of these qualifications, the nature of a standards-based approach to qualifications, and issues affecting their design.

Such an evaluation, I believe, will reveal the necessity of a National Qualifications Framework (NQF) in Sri Lanka designed to cover all national qualifications.

The aim is to apply the framework to all qualifications and stress that the true test of value is whether the qualification is fit for its purpose. Eventually, it will reduce the importance of labels such as "vocational" and "academic".

Although this article focuses on technical and vocational qualifications, much of the content could be applied to other qualifications as well.

A NQF should be the national policy for regulated qualifications in Sri Lankan education and training.

It should incorporate the qualifications from each education and training sector into a single comprehensive national qualifications framework. It will underpin the national system of qualifications in Sri Lanka, encompassing higher education, vocational education, training and schools.

The users of the NQF can span each education and training sector: schools, vocational education and training and higher education and include the accrediting authorities and institutions providing education and training.

The many NQF stakeholders will include industry and its representative bodies, unions, professional associations and licensing authorities and governments.

Ultimately students, graduates and employers, both local and international, benefit from the quality qualifications that are built on the requirements of the NQF. The NQF will accommodate the diversity of purposes of Sri Lankan education and training now and into the future.

It will also support individuals' lifelong learning goals by providing the basis to progress through education and training and gain recognition.

Prerequisites

An analysis of Sri Lanka's system of qualifications will disclose that there are four significant prerequisites for the development of a national system of qualifications. These are planning, provision, assessment and recognition and analysis of management institutions and processes. Planning means identification of the qualifications needed for the country's economy and foreseeing the future trends by continuously studying the labour market.

Provision means the training and studies processes performed at recognised educational institutions as well as the non-formal self-contained learning processes.

Assessment and recognition mean appraisal of the competencies acquired in the education system and labour market, granting official recognition of the acquired qualification by certificates, diplomas and other documents. The management means the arrangement and supervision of the system of qualifications processes, performed by recognised State institutions and accredited institutes. All of the above facts imply that the development of an essentially new national system of qualifications must be based on the analysis of not only the present situation of institutions and the processes, but also their development.

With the introduction of a proper NQF, we can look forward to moving away from the concept of competencies that are created solely within the education system. The focus will automatically divert to a greater extent on what a person can do rather than what he or she has in the form of certifications.