Malam Adamu-Adamu
In a bid to properly certify technical proficiency and expertise in the informal sector and align same with the formal sector, the minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, has flagged off the Nigerian Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF)
At a ceremony hosted in Merit House, Abuja by the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), the minister also gave out operational licenses to training, awarding bodies, sector skills councils, including Industrial Training Fund, Nigeria Institute of Building (NIOB), Nigeria Institute of Welding (NIW) and Skills Care Development Council among others.
The sector skills councils identify, design and update employment-based standards of competence for occupations they represent. They define what the job entails, while awarding bodies are the top-level training certification organisations which design the structures of qualifications and accredit the certification which training and assessment organisations use.
The chairperson of Skills Care Development Council, one of the sector skills councils, Mrs Angela Ajala, who received the license from the education minister along with her members, said the license authorises the council to identify and determine the skills and competences applicable in the care, education and health of children and the elderly and to ensure that the people offering such care have the required competences.
According to her, with this license, the council would work to ensure that issues concerning children’s care, education and health would now be administered in a standardized manner in the country – no longer an all-comers’ affair.
Council secretary, Dr. Olubukola Dosunmu, said the council would be contacting players in the industry – child care centres, private schools, special education schools, motherless babies’ homes, etc – to sensitise them on the council’s mandate and the need to standardize the quality of care provided by them. According to her, the programme would help to provide employment opportunities for many youths as well as enhancing qualitative work delivery.
NSQF is a system for the development, classification and recognition of competencies acquired by individuals in their areas of work and provides lifelong training opportunities for individuals to meet the manpower needs of different sectors of the economy.
