ANQA carries on meetings with the representatives in the field. On 17 July, the director of National Centre for Vocational Education and Training Enhancement, Mr. Samvel Pipoyan was invited to ANQA. He presented the main directions of the VET reforms at the implementation of which the activity of their centre is aimed. These directions include the development of national educational standards and subject syllabi, teaching staff training, and integration into the international developments. He also informed that they are developing about 10.000 occupation descriptors. According to S. Pipoyan, the descriptors will form a better idea about the VET system of Armenia and the demanded professions.
Mr. Pipoyan also touched upon the problems of the field. According to him, the absence of the National Qualification Framework is one of the major issues; however Mr. Pipoyan hopes that Armenia will soon develop the NQF. Still, the development of the NQF is a rather complicated process, and even European Union managed to develop and accept European Qualification Framework only on 23 April 2008. According to S. Pipoyan, attention should be paid to the final examination phase of the education to regulate the quality of the specialists joining the labor market. In fact, the state examination administration should be reviewed, and the process should include both the employers and the agencies responsible for the field, like ANQA, for instance. Mr. Pipoyan also highlighted the development and adoption of the VET enhancement concept paper in 2009.Another major problem is that trade unions and professional unions, in general, do not function efficiently and they are not active in educational processes.
During the meeting Mr. Pipoyan also introduced the international practices in the field of VET.
“There are a lot of things to do and all the centres should cooperate in sake of quality education, since we have a goal to provide quality education in accordance with the international standards”, said S. Pipoyan. At the end he suggested ANQA to cooperate with their agency and concentrate the capacities of the two agencies first and foremost in developing legal-normative acts regulating the field.