REPOST _ Certification of Qualification Services Under ILO - CQS-0004

1. The Project

The overall objective of the project is to improve and promote the acquisition of market-relevant skills to increase workforce employability and help to ensure decent employment for Syrian refugees and Lebanese youth and adults.

The project will strengthen vulnerable groups employability and access to jobs and will enhance the capacity of training providers in delivering competency-based skills training and post training support services. Accordingly the project will design and implement accredited training programmes that reach NEETs, dropouts, unemployed youth, existing workforce within Lebanese host communities and refugee populations. These training programmes will improve knowledge, skills and professional readiness of youth and adults to facilitate their integration in the labour market, thereby stabilising livelihoods and supporting incomes for the target group as well as their dependents. These training programmes will be market-relevant and designed based on specific skills requested by the targeted population and jobs needed in the targeted communities, which will be assessed at the beginning of the programme.

Beneficiaries will be trained and certified on skills relevant to the labour market. They will receive non-formal vocational, entrepreneurship and employability / competency-based skills training. Beneficiaries will have access to a referral network of post training service providers to further their employability. They will benefit from pre-enrollment and employment counselling guided by trained and certified staff on post training support services through the project. Furthermore, beneficiaries will be referred to business start-up training provided either through this project or other ILO projects and/or other training opportunities offered by other development partners. The project will also make use of results and recommendations of skills anticipation studies conducted through other ILO projects to implement relevant training. In addition, the project will take into consideration arising skills-set needs as result of the multifaceted crisis in Lebanon including adaptation of learning delivery in line with global and country level factors of change and digitalization learning .

1. Trainees’ profile

Trainees in Welding , Post Covid Health Care (Elderly ) , Industrial Plumbing , Agri-Food .

Target: 80

Method: A third party will be contracted to conduct a professional standardized test and will provide accreditation to the beneficiaries that successfully achieve the acceptable grade per competency. The acceptable grade is determined by the accreditation body (comparable to a pass/fail threshold).

The trainees will be assessed on two levels,

a) “Formative assessment” The trainer will monitor and evaluate the progress of the trainees in acquiring the abilities filling in the “formative assessment” for each trainee, at the end of the training all graduates will receive certificate of attendance issued by Safadi Foundation.

B) “Standard assessment” The assessment of competences will be carried out by a professional third party

(accredited for testing and inspection) independent from the training provider assuring transparency and consistency in the assessment and in the certification of the qualification. Based on the Assessment standards individuals will then be assessed in order to determine if they have the requisite abilities for effective work performance, all based on a set of “Assessment criteria and indicators” that will be set by the third party in line with training objective (expected learning outcome defined in the curriculum), The candidate is considered competent if demonstrate ability in passing 80% of the total tested abilities. Noting that certificates issued by third party will show a breakdown of passed/failed abilities, so the certificate’s holder and future employer both know strengths and areas of improvement for the beneficiary.

Annex A- Scope of Work

Under the guidance of, and in coordination with, the Project Manager, Centre Manager and the Project team, the selected Testing agency “Third party inspector” is required to set assessment standard, test and certify the competencies of 80 trainees to define their ability to perform work in 4 different subjects (Welding , Post Covid Health Care (Elderly ) , Industrial Plumbing , Agri-Food

Methodology

The below describes the methodology adopted to evaluate the level of qualification of a Vocational Trainings participants.

Qualification allows to recognize the technical capacity of a professional, in a given activity and with a defined level of technicality.

Certification of competencies is awarded by a third-party body, which is itself accredited.

The third-party body objectively evaluates the competencies of concerned persons and the

compliance with adequate requirements.

After a scheduled evaluation of competencies, testing agency will formally recognize the skills that a candidate has developed through the teaching program.

The candidate who passes the assessment and the expected performance criteria for all core competencies in a specific field will receive a Certificate of Qualification.

1. Assessment development

Based on the Vocational Trainings curricula (3 Different Topics), testing agency’s experts will develop the related assessment tools to be adopted by the assessors, and upon which the performance of individuals will be evaluated. These tools are, but not limited to:

a. Questionnaire, for interview purposes

b. Compliance checklist “assessment standard”

For this purpose, all trainings’ curricula will be issued to the testing agency, so that accurate evaluation criteria are prepared.

1. Onsite assessment

• Phase 1: Questionnaire & interviews

The purpose of this phase is to assess the theoretical knowledge and the general competencies of each trainee. Interviews could be conducted on site or in a classroom.

The assessor will fill the prepared questionnaire and answers will be analyzed prior to results issuance.

• Phase 2: On-site assessment

Assessors will inspect on-site applications done by the trainees and will fill the related compliance checklist based on their observations. Observations will be analyzed prior to results issuance.

Each assessment, with both phases, would require approximately 30 minutes per trainee