Workshop in Honiara Explores Pathways for Credit Transfer and Micro-Credentials Across the Pacific

By Sharon Nanau 

A regional workshop focused on developing a Commonwealth Credit Transfer Framework and exploring micro-credentials in the digital age concluded today in Honiara.

Hosted by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) in collaboration with the Solomon Islands National University (SINU), the workshop brought together educators and stakeholders from across the Pacific region to discuss how credit transfer and micro-credentialing could meet the evolving educational and workforce needs in the region.

In his remarks at the workshop yesterday, Minister of Education and Human Resource Development Hon. Tozen Leokana said micro-credentials provide an agile means for upskilling and reskilling ensuring the country’s workforce remains competitive and adaptable.

“Micro-Credentials extends beyond individual learning. They enhance the mobility of qualifications across countries, enabling professionals to build upon multiple short-term training experiences and obtain recognized qualifications that improve their employment prospects. This is particularly critical in a globalized and technological-driven world where lifelong learning is essential for career progression and economic development. Across the Pacific, I acknowledge that we are not starting from scratch. Many of our countries have already embarked on initiatives to establish national and regional qualifications frameworks that align with our Pacific, and most importantly, global standards,” he said.

In an interview with SIBC news SINU’s Vice Chancellor Prof. Transform Aqorau said the workshop offers Micro-credentials a new pathway to reimagine education, making it more flexible, more inclusive, and more responsive to the needs of learners at all stages of life.

“The workshop offers the opportunity to break down the walls of traditional education systems, and bring learning to where people are, in our markets, in our villages, in our workplaces, and on their mobile phones. But what does this look like in practice? It means creating short, stackable qualifications that recognize real skills. For example, for our informal sector, we can design micro-credentials in financial literacy, customer service, inventory management, and mobile banking etc,” he said.

Prof. Aqorau added the micro-credentials also need to be developed in accordance with the national qualification framework of each country to enable its credibility.

“We must ensure that micro-credentials be developed of quality assured, transparent and aligned with national qualification frameworks. We must build systems that allow credit transfer and recognition across institutions and borders. And we must make sure that no one is left behind, including women and people with disabilities, and especially those in the most remote parts of our region,” he said.

Meanwhile Commonwealth of Learning Canada CEO and President Prof Peter Scott said they are privilege to help members of the commonwealth look at how to drive the cost of education down and equity in the education sector.

“We know that the business of usual education has not and will not be able to solve the problems we currently face and have faced for many years. We know that that innovation allows us to ask different questions of the current challenges that we see that conventional education currently must address. There’s a whole range of things that might help us to do this and digitalization is a powerful force across this planet. The challenge for this meeting will be to discuss what has changed in the last few years that might now allow us to do something quite powerful and that is to allow credit to flow across our borders for the benefit of our learners and our institutions and our nations and our economies,” he said.

SIBC news understand similar workshops was also held in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia region.

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