Vocational development progressing

Ishara Mudugamuwa

The development and implementation of the National Vocational Qualification(NVQ) system has progressed to a satisfactory level and it has made a positive impact in improving relevance and quality of the technical and vocational education and training (TVET) sector of the country, Tertiary and Vocational Education Council sources said.

About 10,358 persons have received National Vocational Qualification Certificates in 46 occupation categories in 2010. About 15 percent of them got their certificates through the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) system.

According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), countries in South Asia, such as, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives and Pakistan have viewed development in Sri Lanka and noted benefits of an NVQ Framework. Sri Lanka is assisting these countries on a government to government basis in training their officials involved in the development of the NVQ framework and in sharing its experience with system and process development, he said. The Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission (TVEC) introduced the NVQ system for the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) sector of Sri Lanka in association with the Skills Development Project funded by the ADB.

According to TVEC sources, the NVQ system covers qualifications at craft, middle technical and degree levels based on industry-identified competency standards. The number of levels was decided to provide a sufficient spread of qualification in each category.

Seven levels of qualification framework was to be implemented in two stages with levels 1-4 covered in the first stage. Qualifications in one to four to be occupation based. The second phase of NVQ framework development was focused on levels 5-7 and the minimum entry qualification to level 5 be level 3 or 4 in a relevant occupation.

NVQ level 7 programmes are conducted by the University of Vocational Technology (Univotec). Students can obtain the bachelor of technology or bachelor of eduction in technology degree qualifications.