The World Bank's East Asia-Pacific region received a trust fund from the Korean government to promote skills development and job creation in the region including in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar,Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam over a period of three years, starting in June2014. The three-year grant program has a broad objective to promote effective policies and programs in skills development and job creation. It aims to: 1) Develop a knowledge base on skills supply, demand and systems by conductinganalytical work with innovative methodological approaches; 2) Provide a forum on National Competency Standards as well as National and RegionalQualifications Frameworks within ASEAN+3 countries; and 3) Promote dissemination and learning exchanges on promising policies and programs inskills development and job creation within and beyond the East Asia-Pacific region,including examples of best practices.Specifically, in Component (2) of the program it was identified that there is aneed to take stock of the current country level progress and challenges with regard to development of national competency standards and national qualifications frameworks (NQF). Further, there is a need to understand the various types of standards currently being used in different countries and their definitions, comparability, and the process and stakeholders involved in the development of such standards. Finally, it is important toevaluate to what extent they truly reflect the requirements of today and tomorrow's labour market demands.This synthesis report brings together research undertaken in 12 participating EAP countries (Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Korea, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Philippines,Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) who responded to a survey related to national qualifications systems, including the barriers and issues facing implementation of quality assurance strategies such as NQF development, existence and implementation
