The National Qualifications Framework is scheduled to go before Cabinet soon.
This was revealed by the Executive Director of the Barbados Accreditation Council (BAC), Valda Alleyne, who spoke recently at the Open Forum on “Understanding Competency-Based Education and Training”.
“At this point, it is expected to go before Cabinet certainly within the next few months, and at this time it is proposed and we anticipate that it would be called ‘The Barbados Qualifications and Credit Framework’. It is meant to be a major transformation tool in the education and training system and it will require the input; it will require the enthusiasm and the buy-in of employers, tertiary institutions, secondary institutions, all the education and training institutions as well as employees and generally, the public,” Alleyne stated.
So what is a Qualifications Framework?
According to Alleyne, "It is a single description at the national level of the education and training system which is internationally understood and through which all qualifications and learning achievements in education and training may be described and relate to each other in a coherent way, and which defines the relationship between education and qualifications...[It] is taken from the European Framework for Qualifications of the European Higher Education Area, and Barbados has adopted it in terms of what we see as a qualifications framework.”
In addition, it should serve as a tool by which persons who process this qualification can live and work across the world, said the BAC Executive Director.
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