January 7, 2008

FORMER MINISTER OF LABOUR AND THE CIVIL SERVICE Rawle Eastmond (third right) and Senior Director, NCTVET, Paulette Dunn-Smith (fourth right) with the NVQ Assessors and staff of the NCTVET: (from left) Orson Alleyne, Norma Shorey-Bryan, Winifred Williams, Paul Puckerin, Llavonne Clarke, Dr Richard Graham, Jennifer Walker, Henderson Wiltshire, Henderson Cadogan, Lurline Bannister, Ivor Boyce and Joan Leacock.

FORMER MINISTER OF LABOUR AND THE CIVIL SERVICE Rawle Eastmond has described the National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) programme as a paradigm shift in certification, aimed at taking workforce development to the much needed next level.

Speaking during the October 24, 2007 ceremony to award the National Vocational Qualification of Jamaica (NVQ-J) to Barbados’ first batch of trained and certified assessors, Former Minister Eastmond said that NVQs went beyond the certification of knowledge and/or skills to provide evidence of workers’ performance, or ability, through certification of the individual’s competence when measured against occupational standards.

He said: “Certification – as evidence of one’s knowledge, skills, understanding and general ability to perform a work role to the standards that employers want and expect – is especially important in today’s competitive working environment.

“Ladies and gentlemen it has been predicted that unskilled and low-skilled jobs are quickly becoming problematic in such an environment. Indeed this is a concern not just for Barbados, but for labour markets the world over.”

The former minister noted that as a leading developing country aspiring to developed country status in the very near future, it was necessary to stress the importance of strengthening Barbados’ training systems to ensure workers had access to quality training, “which hinged on a realistic assessment of
performance as evidenced by reliable quality assurance and certification”.

He pointed out that at the national level, NVQs offered a transparent system of certification which positioned Barbados to take advantage of opportunities for labour mobility within CARICOM and at the international level.“I wish to publicly commend the TVET (Council) for its tireless efforts in ensuring the quality and relevance of Barbados’ vocational educational system to the realities of the marketplace,” he added.

The former minister said that occupational standards of competence would help training institutions to better align curricula with the needs of employment and that NVQs would be awarded to certify that
an individual had met the internationally benchmarked occupational standards for a specific area of work.

FORMER MINISTER OF LABOUR AND THE CIVIL SERVICE Rawle
Eastmond presenting customer service trainer and NVQ
Assessor with the National Initiative for Service Excellence,
Norma Shorey-Bryan, with her double award: an NVQ-J Level
4 in Assessment and an NVQ-J Level 4 in Training
and Development.

“This certainly reflects international best practice in the modern working environment,” he stressed.
Chairman of the TVET Council Rudy Gibbons, in his opening remarks, thanked all of the organisations and individuals who had partnered with the Council in the pursuit of its mandate of facilitating
workforce development and had, in particular, contributed to the launch of the NVQ programme.

He said that Barbados was taking steps to ensure the quality of its workforce with the introduction of an NVQ system that was part of a workforce development model which had competence-based training, assessment and certification at its core.

He added that under the leadership of the TVET Council, an NVQ System was being developed and implemented, which was designed to assess job performance against internationally benchmarked
occupational standards set by industry.