ENG-2017 — Page 182

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Education

quality assurance mechanism. All qualifications recognised under the framework are locally accredited by the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications (HKCAAVQ), established under the HKCAAVQ Ordinance, or by self-accrediting institutions in Hong Kong. The government maintains a web-based Qualifications Register, which lists the qualifications and their associated learning programmes recognised under the framework.

As at 2017, the government had helped 22 industries' set up Industry Training Advisory Committees under the QF, covering over 50 per cent of the labour force. A major task of each committee, which comprises industry stakeholders, is to draw up Specification of Competency Standards for its sector, setting out the skills, knowledge and outcome standards required of employees in the sector's different functional areas, and enabling course providers to design training programmes to meet the sector's needs. These standards provide useful guides for the development of in-house training and human resources management.

The Recognition of Prior Learning mechanism under the QF enables practitioners to obtain formal recognition for the knowledge, skills and experience they acquire in the workplace, and facilitates further learning without the need to start from scratch. The QF also provides for credit accumulation and transfer (CAT) to further support learning pathways for learners, and helps education and training providers develop and refine their CAT systems.

To support sustainable development of the framework, the government operates the $1 billion QF Fund to provide steady income for QF-related initiatives. According to the October 2017 Policy Address, the government plans to inject $1.2 billion into this endowment fund.

In 2017, the government completed two referencing projects with the Scottish and Irish QFs to enhance collaboration with the HKQF.

Quality Assurance of Post-secondary Education

Two quality assurance bodies monitor the quality of the post-secondary education sector. The HKCAAVQ is the statutory body responsible for the quality assurance of all operators and programmes except the UGC-funded universities, which are self-accredited. The Quality Assurance Council (QAC), a semi-autonomous non-statutory body under the aegis of the UGC, conducts quality audits of the UGC-funded universities with a view to assuring the quality of all their programmes at the levels of sub-degree, first degree and above, however funded, is sustained, improved and internationally competitive.

The government works with the HKCAAVQ and QAC through the Liaison Committee on Quality Assurance to identify ways to enhance and rationalise the quality assurance required for the self-financing post-secondary regime.

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Printing and Publishing: Watch and Clock; Catering; Hairdressing; Property Management; Electrical and Mechanical Services; Jewellery; Information and Communications Technology; Automotive; Beauty; Logistics; Banking; Import and Export; Testing, Inspection and Certification; Retail; Insurance; Manufacturing Technology (Tooling, Metals and Plastics); Elderly Care Services; Security Services; Human Resources Management; Fashion and Arboriculture and Horticulture.

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