System for the Standardisation and Certification of Competencies - El Salvador

Source: ILO/CINTERFOR

The Salvadoran Vocational Training Institute INSAFORP has designed and proposed a national training and certification system

As part of its five-year plan for 2000-2004, the Salvadoran Vocational Training Institute INSAFORP has introduced an organisational development plan that focuses on Training Based on Occupational Competencies and the design and promotion of a National Training and Certification System.

One of the main tasks of INSAFORP is to organise, develop and co-ordinate a system for the training and upgrading of human resources. For that purpose, it has proposed a "System for the Standardisation and Certification of Competencies" that has the following general characteristics:

• Demand driven system based on results
• A system aiming at greater institutional co-ordination in the medium term, and at more fluent interaction between enterprises and training services
• A system of standardisation and certification of competencies providing the market with reliable and timely information on what persons can do in a work environment
• A system providing more flexible training programmes, of better quality and in keeping with the needs of the population and productive facilities
• An updatable, adaptable system
• A system envisaging training as a long-term process covering all possiblities of personal and occupational progress for workers
• The implementation of pilot schemes in different sectors of the national economy in order to define standards and procedures, feeding back into the original design for subsequent implementation at national level and gradually in all sectors of the economy.

The main guidelines of this proposal are:

• Defining and adopting technical standards for occupational competencies
• Establishing a competencies’ certification system with social credibility and wide acceptance in the labour market

In order to structure this proposal, the Ministry of Labour and Social Security and INSAFORP signed an agreement in 1999 underlining their coincidence about the country’s need for duly qualified and certified human resources.

The project was visualised as a tripartite undertaking charged with upgrading the competencies of the country’s manpower, within a context of human and technical performance criteria, to improve the competitiveness of the productive sector and the conditions of employment of workers in a scenario of regional integration, economic openness and globalisation of the economy.

DACUM and SCID are the tools that are being used for identifying competencies and designing training programmes. Some of the results obtained so far with these methodologies are:

• 11 competency profiles in the automobile mechanics sector
• 4 competency profiles in the plastics sector
• 2 competency profiles in the construction industry
• 1 competency profile for the commerce sector
• 4 competency profiles for the electricity sector
• 1 competency profile for the crafts sector

The system design provides for five sub-processes, namely, Standardisation, Training, Evaluation, Certification, and Study and Monitoring of the Labour Market. Among other things, this last one will follow up and evaluate the results of vocational training.

Several pilot projects are being devised to launch the system in representative enterprises or groups of firms of some sectors or areas. They will initially include the services sector and the occupational areas of electricity and automotive mechanics.

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