Dr. Jawaher Al-Mudhahki, CE of the National Authority for Qualifications and Quality Assurance of Education & Training (NAQQAET), received a letter from Dr. Janet Brown, CE of the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), in which Dr Brown expressed SQA’s commitment to support the development of the Bahrain Qualification Framework. This framework supports the Kingdom’s Vocational Educational & Training (VET) development efforts to qualify Bahraini citizens and realize the aspirations of Bahrain’s Economic Vision 2030 for which the knowledge-based economy forms one of the most significant foundations.
As a keynote speaker at the 2nd NAQQAET Conference held in February, Dr. Brown praised the current cooperation between the two Authorities and commended the Kingdom’s efforts to promote Bahrainis’ skills and the interest paid to the development of the education and training sectors.
At the 2nd NAQQAET Conference, Dr. Brown presented a paper titled: “The National Qualifications Framework: Benefits for the VET Landscape”, in which she reviewed the development stages of Bahrain’s National Qualifications Framework (NQF), with SQA as the international partner in developing the NQF. The conference was attended by more than 350 international experts and participants from all over the world.
On that occasion, she pointed out that SQA is a key partner in the expansion of the Authority’s tasks in the Kingdom through the inclusion of the NQF under the umbrella of the Authority’s mandate; a significant step of the VET development efforts.
On her part, Dr. Al-Mudhahki praised SQA’s professional expertise in developing qualifications frameworks across the world, which had great impact on supporting Bahrain’s experiences and contributed to developing the Kingdom’s NQF. This, in turn, will increasingly assure the quality of education and training sectors so they can achieve their aspiration for sustainable development.
The task of developing the National Qualifications Framework was assigned to the Authority by a royal decree issued by HM the King of the Kingdom of Bahrain in December 2012. Accordingly, the Authority is currently working with its international partner, SQA, on a pilot phase of the NQF implementation which was launched in October 2012 with the participation of 16 VET institutions. During this pilot it is intended to map more than 80 qualifications onto the ten levels of the NQF.
SQA has participated in developing the NQF’s various policies, procedures and level standards during the set-up phase under the supervision of the Labour Fund (Tamkeen).
