National seminar on skills development

Ishara MUDUGAMUWA

A National Seminar on Building Skills for Employability, Trends and Perspectives organized by the Colombo Plan Staff College for Technician Education in collaboration with Technical Education and Training Department (DTET) and Youth Affairs and Skills Development Ministry will be held on April 1, 2011 under the patronage of the Youth Affairs and Skills Development Minister Dullas Alahapperuma at the Ministry.

The Seminar will be conducted under the themes of Skills for Employability; Current Developments and Future Challenges and Shaping Employability for Future; New Perspectives and Approaches.

The main objectives of the seminar is to provide insights for policymakers, Technical and Vocational Education and Training(TVET) providers and educationalists on skills for employability current developments and future trends in the TVET segment, identify and examine issues, challenges in addressing skills development for employability, said a DTET official.

All policymakers across the world are focusing their efforts towards generating jobs and increasing productivity as one of their top agendas.

For the developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region addressing the challenge of the expanding population is a necessity through the attainment of an inclusive economic growth and the reduction of unemployment and poverty.

Skills and skills development are vital components of all efforts in this challenging area. So it is necessary to have comprehensive and adaptive systems to build skills, said the official.

He also said that the seminar will provide a timely opportunity to share knowledge and experiences on the educational and training dimension of the enhancing skills for employability through system in TVET and to discuss the policy tools, the coordinating mechanisms and the scope of national educational training strategies to deal with them.