Integration of new qualifications and competencies in the Asia-Pacific

While most Asia-Pacific countries have introduced measures to improve formal TVET graduates’ pathways to further education and employment, many lack systems for recognizing and certifying learning gained in informal or non-formal settings. Hence, pathways for many young people remain restricted, particularly in the region’s low- and lower-middle income countries, which tend to have large informal economies. Issues that have blocked countries’ progress in improving their skills recognition and certification systems include: limited/overstretched TVET capacity and weak coordination between ministries in charge of TVET. (UNESCO 2016) 

Low-income countries in the region have faced higher barriers to developing robust skills recognition and certification systems than middle- or high-income countries, since designing, implementing and maintaining an NQF is expensive and requires a well-developed education and labour market infrastructure. (UNESCO 2016)

A further challenge is that recognition of prior learning (RPL) processes in many lower- and middle-income countries have been promoted by donors, while key stakeholders in countries such as Bangladesh have resisted alterations in pathways to further education, continuing to believe that access to established TVET programmes should be limited to learners with formal educational qualifications. (Maurer and Morshed 2022) 

Some of the region’s high-income countries have faced constraints in rolling out RPL. While the promotion of RPL has been a major policy objective of the Australian TVET system since the early 1990s, take-up of RPL has not met expectations and has in fact fallen in recent years. (NCVER 2020) 

Educational stakeholders in the Asia-Pacific region have highlighted the need for further policy-relevant research providing concrete evidence of the value of NQFs in terms of improving recognition of qualifications and/or student and labour mobility. (UNESCO 2018)  

South-South cooperation has become an important driver of social and economic development in the Asia-Pacific. Middle-income countries such as China, India, Indonesia and Thailand have emerged as the ‘new donors’, providing financial support and technical assistance to the region’s less-developed countries. This assistance is channelled either bilaterally or in triangular cooperation with international partners or the region’s high-income official development assistance (ODA) providers. Interventions using South-South or triangular cooperation modalities have been implemented to build human and institutional capacities, promote intra-regional trade and improve technical and physical infrastructures in the target countries. (UNESCAP 2018)

Intra-regional cooperation is crucial for ensuring a fairer distribution of the benefits that regional integration and increased labour mobility bring. Developing countries in the Asia-Pacific often face institutional, financial and technical capacity constraints that prevent them from fully implementing mutual recognition arrangements (MRAs) due to the costly, lengthy and complex process of harmonizing qualifications frameworks and benchmarking occupational standards. (ADB 2017)  

Inequalities between countries, as well as between groups within countries, could widen unless skills recognition and certification systems are extended and strengthened. Issues that have blocked countries’ progress in improving their skills recognition and certification systems have included: limited/ overstretched TVET capacity and weak coordination between ministries in charge of TVET. (UNESCO 2016)

A recent OECD publication notes that there is growing awareness among Asia-Pacific countries of the need to take a more regional approach to development cooperation, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. (OECD 2022)