Florence Tsang
In a bid to lessen the mismatch between new graduates’ skills and the requirements of companies, the Education Bureau of Hong Kong (EDB) is attempting to strengthen the quality of its vocational education.
During the closing day of the conference on “The New Frontiers of Teaching and Learning Quality Assurance in Higher Education,” which was held at the Macao Polytechnic Institute (IPM), Florence Tsang, assistant secretary of Further Education Division of the Education Bureau in Hong Kong presented a comparability study of the Hong Kong Education Frameworks (HKQF) and European Education Frameworks (EQF).
The study was undertaken to facilitate the mutual understanding of the qualifications of Hong Kong and European countries whose national qualifications frameworks are referenced in the EQF.
HKQF is a unitary framework that covers all sectors of learning; from academic to vocational and to the continuing education sector.
With this framework, the bureau has placed all these kinds of qualifications together in a single location to ensure that students can articulate their qualifications across the different sectors.
According to Tsang, the neighboring region aims to be an educational hub in the Asia Pacific region. With that prospect, Tsang claimed that the EDB had benchmarked the qualification system and underpinned the quality insurance mechanism against that found in Europe – which she sees as a major step for internationalization for Hong Kong’s tertiary education frameworks.
The representative of Hong Kong’s education bureau noted that the comparability study also aimed to ensure that global employers could better understand the qualifications and standards of the HKSAR.
“Learners in Hong Kong, especially from the higher education sector aspire to study overseas. Very often what they face is the [lack of] recognition of their qualifications,” she told the Times. “This [study] would help our learners or labor find job overseas and study overseas.”
Meanwhile, while there is still a mismatch in the labor market, Tsang stressed that the Hong Kong education bureau had seen improvements in the bridging the gap.
As stakeholders in Hong Kong give less value to vocational education, Tsang highlighted that the EDB had been striving to improve its quality. “In recent years, we have started to rebrand our vocational education as vocational and professional education because we see that many of these qualifications are actually up to a degree level,” she explained.
Meanwhile Pauline Tang CEO of the International Center of Excellence in Tourism and Hospitality Education stressed there was an obvious gap between the demands of employers and the skills of existing workers.
“It’s not a lack of anything other than the fact that communication is not two-way flowing and that’s the reason why this need for [a] global partnership is extremely important for them,” she explicated.
According to Tang, ongoing dialogue with institutions and stakeholders would help narrow the mismatch. She cited that industry, education providers and quality assurance authorities could collaborate to ensure that the demand and supply gap could be narrowed to produce a robust workforce.
The collaboration could also help contribute to the sustainable development goal of the Goal 4 of the new UN Agenda, which is to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.’
Tang explained that educational training providers should equip their learners with ‘necessary core and soft skills to seek and secure employment in the competitive labor market, nationally or internationally’ and stated that educational systems still have a long way to go to achieve this aim.
“So now we really have to change our mindset and we really have to start progressively and actively engaging with each other [and] work in close collaboration and cooperation to achieve this vision,” Tang noted.
The scholar also presented the need to enhance life-long learning to explore the possibility of developing programs for upskilling and professional development.
Quality assurance conference concludes
The two-day “International Conference on The New Frontiers of Teaching and Learning Quality Assurance in Higher Education” concluded yesterday. More than 30 experts and scholars from more than 10 countries and regions in Europe, Oceania and Asia gathered in Macau to discuss the various factors affecting the quality of teaching and learning and to share the innovation and frontier development of quality assurance.
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