UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre, in collaboration with the Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission Sri Lanka, organized a workshop titled ‘TVET Systems for Sustainable Development: Innovations & Best Practices in Quality Assurance of TVET in South Asia’ in Colombo from the 20-22 February 2017. The workshop hosted key stakeholders and UNEVOC centres from the South Asian region, to discuss their qualification systems and their quality assurance against regional and international trends.

As more and more countries in South Asia complete their National Qualification Frameworks (NQF), there is a greater need for realigning existing quality assurance systems to support the improved learning outcomes envisioned by these frameworks. All the participating countries developed a Country Report outlining the salient features of their respective NQF and National Vocational Qualification Framework, which were used as a basis for the subsequent discussions and the development of a comparative overview for the sub-region. While providing a platform to the participating stakeholders to learn more about the different systems within the region and beyond, this workshop also enabled them to identify which aspects of other such systems were conducive to adaptation in their respective contexts.

One of the key learnings from the workshop was that while all participating countries had existing National Qualification Frameworks with the Vocational Qualification Frameworks as their subset, the quality assurance systems and their evaluation mechanisms were still at early stages of development. During the discussions, the participants also highlighted the need for continuing mutual cooperation and policy learning to identify best practices to bridge existing gaps in their respective systems.

The workshop was attended by 48 participants including 5 UNEVOC centres from 5 Member States in the region:

Country	Participating UNEVOC Centre
Bangladesh	Bangladesh Technical Education Board
India	PSSCIVE, Bhopal
Iran	Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University, Tehran
Pakistan	National Vocational and Technical Training Commission
Sri Lanka	Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission University of Vocational Technology (UNIVOTEC), Colombo

In addition to the UNEVOC Centres, the workshop also saw the participation of delegates from the National Skills Development Authority - India, Ministry of Skills Development and Vocational Training – Government of Sri Lanka, UNESCO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, JET Education Services South Africa, ADB-World Bank Joint Project on Skills Development, and the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre in Bonn, amongst other regional and national stakeholders.