Under the higher educational system in Sri Lanka, bachelor degrees in Arts, Science, Commerce and all other areas are offered under the purview of UGC (University Grants Commission) to maintain the uniformity and the recognition irrespective of the university or the offering body.
This process is well established in Sri Lanka for Academic Education. As a matter of fact, Academic Education is not for vocational or professional purposes, but for research and respective higher studies. Unfortunately, Academic Educational opportunities are limited to the maximum of 10%-15% of students who are successfully completing A/L exams.
In A/L examination, over 200,000 students and in O/L examination over 100,000 students get drop-out each year, these students are unable to find a proper channel to acquire a higher level qualification or gain relevant experience to enter the job market. Most of the students are wasting their precious time and money by facing A/L examination two or three times. Consequently, students who become exhausted with their repeated A/L examinations may enter the unskilled job market with lower salary scales.
As a result. to overcome the issues discussed above, the Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission (TVEC) has taken necessary steps to introduce the National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) System with 7 Levels. The NVQ level 7 is equivalent to the bachelor degree qualification. Students can enrol into the M.Sc. or any other postgraduate programme after completion the NVQ level 7. Students who have successfully completed NVQ level 5, can enter for the 2nd year in most of the foreign universities where the relevant field is available.
Compared to the academic qualifications, the NVQ is designed for the job seekers soon after their A/L exams. The speciality of the NVQ system is that, at the completion of each level of the NVQ qualification, candidates become eligible to enter the professional job market with fairly higher salary scales than the academic qualification holders.
The Vocational Training Authority (VTA) under the Ministry of Science, Technology, Research, Skills Development
