SINGAPORE: The two national Continuing Education and Training (CET) campuses will be fully operational by the second half of this year, where they will be able to train some 50,000 workers annually.
S$300 million was set aside for the two campuses, which are located in Paya Lebar and Jurong.
The decision to build the campuses was first announced by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during the 2009 National Day Rally Speech.
Some of the facilities that the campus in Paya Lebar will be offering include a lecture theatre that can seat 300 people, event halls for masterclasses and job fairs, and training rooms equipped with advance teaching technologies.
Also known as the Lifelong Learning Institute, it will boast other facilities such as a library and an interactive gallery to help visitors discover career opportunities.
Visitors can also use the centre’s multimedia exhibits to undertake profiling and personality tests to identify potential learning options.
Currently, the Paya Lebar campus houses 12 tenants that offer various skills upgrading programmes for adult learners in various industries, such as information technology and early childhood care.
When fully operational, the campus can accommodate up to 20 tenants, depending on their space requirements.
Swapna Pawar, Asian International College’s head of college, said: “Some of the key benefits are that we have a number of walk-ins that come in because it’s a WDA (Workforce Development Agency) campus.
“We have a childcare centre as well as a training institute here, which then facilitates… the right amount of training that is required for early childcare teachers.”
Leslie Loh, chairman of Lithan Hall Academy, said: “There are a lot of good shared facilities that enable us to use when we have that need. As a training provider, we can’t essentially put up infrastructure to the maximum level. For example, a big theatre hall… we can’t afford it ourselves and we use it occasionally.”
Kenneth Wong Khee Cheak, director of corporate and marketing communications division at Singapore Workforce Development Agency, said: “It’s really to create a focal point for our training community to come together, to build a community that can actually share resources, work together with one another to raise the quality of our CET up to a different level.
“We have also developed some facilities for them to try out new ideas, allow them to innovate on how we can deliver training.
“Of course, this is really to benefit the individual, so how does the individual benefit? It becomes a resource where you can come through at any point of your life to find out more about how (you) can…upgrade (yourself), find out about opportunities available for (you).
“Of course for employers, what does it mean for them? It’s also to find the pipeline of workers to help them to develop their business further.”
source: channelnewsasia.com
