Regional model competency standards: Agriculture and aquaculture
National competency standards play an important and increasing role in skills development and recognition in Asia and the Pacific, as they do in many other parts of the world. They are a guide to the range of skills and knowledge required for a whole industry. Competency standards can be flexibly combined into jobs and occupations. They are the common basis for training programmes, skills assessment, and certification in many countries.
Competency standards, when recognized nationally or across a cluster of nations, can form a key component in assisting the mobility of skilled workers. As part of a quality assured system, the assessment of a person’s skills against accepted benchmarks means that those skills can be applied in similar work, and potential employers can feel confident in the level of competency that a worker claims to have. Workers returning from employment in other countries can have the skills they gained working there formally recognized at home. The Regional Model Competency Standards for agriculture and aquaculture constitute a set of benchmarks that define the skills, knowledge and attributes required to perform a work role in the field of agriculture and aquaculture.