Cabinet has agreed to establish mechanisms geared towards bringing about a level of prestige to current technical and vocational programmes at a cost of over $6 million. The disclosure was made yesterday by Minister of Science, Technology and Tertiary Education Fazal Karim at a post- Cabinet media briefing held at the Office of the Prime Minister in St Clair, Port-of-Spain. Karim revealed Government's plans to launch Workforce Assessment Centres to facilitate the accreditation of persons who may have acquired skills and expertise without the credentials of "formal" training and learning.
"The Cabinet attempts to authorise the establishment of Workforce Assessment Centres where persons with these requisite skills in the vocational sector can visit these centres and present themselves for certification," Karim said. This process, he added, would involve an organised and scientific system known as Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition which will assess the competencies of the individual against established and approved national occupational standards of competence determined by the National Training Agency (NTA).
The NTA, through the authorisation of the Accreditation Council of T&T would have the power to certify persons in the vocational sector through what is referred to as the Caribbean Vocational Qualification in the very same way the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CXC) is awarded to graduate students of the secondary school system. According to the minister these centres, expected to cost $5.25 million, would assess people through existing training providers such as the National Energy Skills Centre, the Metal Industries Company and the Youth Training and Employment Partnership Programme (YTEPP) when they are formally launched in a few weeks. He said: "We expect that in the first phase, it will cater for a projected output of 4,500 candidates by the end of this fiscal year."