New "masterplan" aims to help Singaporeans make better career choices

A new learning masterplan is underway to get employers to become actively involved in building their employees' skills, and helping them to make better career choices.

These are the key points of the new Continuing Education and Training (CET) Masterplan, launched by the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) today.

The masterplan, known as CET 2020, will support the work of the new tripartite committee led by Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam.

This committee - comprising Government, employers, and unions - will work alongside the WDA to implement the new plan, with the aim to build a career-resilient workforce in three ways:

1. Increasing employer involvement in building deep expertise and valuing all skills
2. Enabling employees to make better informed career and learning decisions
3. Developing a wide range of high-quality learning opportunities

“CET 2020 has been developed based on feedback from individuals, unions, and employers," says WDA's chief executive, Ng Cher Pong. "We have identified the major shifts required to enable Singaporeans to be career-resilient in an advanced economy that is driven by innovation and productivity."

For implementation, five-year Sectoral Manpower Strategies will be created, to identify sector-specific skills requirements, the WDA said. It will also leverage the existing Singapore Workforce Skills Qualifications to develop sectoral competency frameworks, that employers can benchmark their HR practices against.

A prototype Individual Learning Portfolio, created by the WDA, has been piloted with 18,000 users, as part of efforts to enable better career decisions for employees. The setting up of a Lifelong Learning Exploration Centre has been proposed, to further guide them to profiling games and tests.

Working adults can look forward to more courses that combine classroom and online learning, as well as an innovation-centric iN.LAB expected to be operational by the second half of 2015.

The Masterplan has also promised Place-and-Train programmes for fresh polytechnic and ITE graduates, that will allow them to apply the skills acquired immediately on the job.

Image: Supplied