HÀ NỘI — Việt Nam’s qualification framework has helped establish relations between Vietnamese proficiency levels and other national qualification frameworks through the ASEAN qualification framework.

Deputy Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Nguyễn Thị Hà made the statement at a conference held on Thursday in Hà Nội.

During the conference, experts discussed the implementation of the ASEAN Qualifications Reference Framework (AQRF) and the ASEAN Framework Agreement on Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRAs).

The AQRF is a common reference framework that enables comparisons of education qualifications across participating ASEAN states.

MARs are agreements between two or more parties to mutually recognise or accept some or all aspects of one another’s assessment results, such as test reports and certificates of compliance.

Deputy Minister Hà said ASEAN member countries have applied MARs in eight careers namely medicine, dentistry, nursing, engineering, architecture, accountancy, surveying and travel.

However, she said, accessing employment opportunities for each member country was not easy, especially for countries with low economic starting points, qualifications, quality of human resources and tough competition.

To support MARs, the ASEAN set up AQRF to compare member countries. The AQRF was approved by ASEAN ministers of economy, education and labour in May 2015.

Việt Nam’s national qualifications framework, consisting of eight levels, was approved by Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc on October 18, 2016.

But the implementation of the national qualifications framework met several challenges, said Hà.

The implementation needed a lot of time, human resources and a quality system. It also needed close co-operation between concerned organisations.

Nguyễn Minh Đức, an expert from the Directorate of Vocational Education and Training, said information on the implementation of Việt Nam’s national qualifications framework was limited because it involved many ministries and agencies, thus it was difficult for management offices to grasp the implementation.

Moreover, many skilled Vietnamese workers did not supply enough information about MRAs, he said.

Deputy Minister Hà said that in the future, the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs would organise different conferences on the issue to update information about the AQRF implementation, challenges during the implementation and propose necessary measures and initiatives.

“It will create good condition for Vietnamese skilled workers to work in other ASEAN countries with high salary and better work conditions,” said Hà. — VNS