Second skills governance training workshop for skills development professionals held in Sylhet

Capacity strengthening workshops for professionals in the skills development sector continued in Sylhet Engineering College from November 27-30, 2014. The goal of the second workshop was to develop monitoring tools to measure the progress of implementation of the National Skills Development Policy in each of the participating agencies.

The workshop looked at the areas of improvement in all the agencies involved, focusing on issues such as quality (student/teacher ratio, percentage of teachers trained) and financing (per capita training cost).

Mr Mikail Shipar, Secretary, Ministry of Labour and Employment and Member-Secretary, National Skills Development Council (NSDC); Mr ABM Khorshed Alam, Chief Executive Officer, NSDC Secretariat and Mr Cezar Dragutan, Chief Technical Advisor, Bangladesh Skills for Employment and Productivity Project, attended the workshop on the second day to hear how each agency is taking the policy forward.

Mr Shipar emphasized the importance of soft skills in all training programmes. Mr Alam highlighted that ministries and departments now offering shorter courses should ensure that content is recognised under the new National Training and Vocational Qualifications Framework, so that participants can be awarded with nationally-recognised qualifications.

Presentations were made by representatives of the Ministry of Industries, Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment, Ministry of Social Welfare, Ministry of Primary and Mass Education, Minstry of Industry and Ministry of Youth and Sports.

After completion of the workshop, officials reported back to their respective agencies and a small follow-up workshop was held in which the monitoring tools were finalized.

Background

The National Skills Development Policy was approved in 2012 and the National Skills Development Council Secretariat (on behalf of the National Skills Development Council) was mandated to oversee its implementation.

In the first phase, nine government ministries and agencies involved in skills development worked with the National Skills Development Council (NSDC) Secretariat to develop action plans for supporting the policy, which led to the formulation of the National Skills Development Policy Implementation Plan. This plan was approved by the Honorable Prime Minister, Chairperson of the NSDC, in early 2014.

As a first step in implementation, it was decided to develop a pool of focal persons of respective ministries, departments and institutions and hold a series of skills governance workshops in regional towns during 2014.

Skills governance training is part of reforming Bangladesh’s skills development system which is currently being undertaken by the Government of Bangladesh through the National Skills Development Policy. This workshop series is funded by the Government of Canada through the Bangladesh Skills for Employment and Productivity Project.

See a 2-page fact sheet on the National Skills Development Policy here
See the full National Skills Development Policy (English/Bangla) here