Experience in developing modular training programs based on professional standards in the Kyrgyz Republic

The article focuses on the issue of developing competency-based vocational training programs on the basis of workplace requirements. International experience suggests that vocational education teachers lack capabilities for interpretation and application of occupational standards in training. Some countries which opted for developing national educational standards failed to base them on the requirements of occupational standards. This has brought additional dislocations to taking adequate account of the workplace requirements in the development of vocational education programs. This write-up describes a pilot methodology for developing programs of vocational education on the basis of occupational standards. The methodology has incorporated some elements of the world practice and is currently being piloted in Kyrgyzstan in three industries at the qualification levels of certified worker and technician Diploma. The methodology is bound by the template of occupational standards, applied in the economically advanced nations, what has determined the working processes applied for their interpretation for the purpose of skills training and assessment. The paper explains the format and the categories inherent to the advanced occupational standards, which in some countries are also named “the competency standards”. The methodology takes advantage of the detailed template of occupational standards, which lends itself to organic transformation of units of standards into training modules and, further down, to the individual subject-based courses within the modular program. The methodology permits developing complex vocational education programs, which involve teaching of a few or many individual disciplines. А modular program functions as a mechanism for integration and synchronisation of these individual disciplines on the basis of the skills assessment requirements drawn from the occupational standards. The article describes some preliminary results of piloting of the new programs in lyceums and colleges of Kyrgyzstan.