Singapore WSQ, Workplace Learning and Assessment

By Dr Helen Bound and Magdalene Lin

This report confirms the understanding that WSQ training is predominantly classroom-based. More importantly, according to available statistics, the delivery of WSQ in 2009 was totally classroom-based.

While our experience indicated that in 2010 there was workplace learning taking place, the extent of workplace learning is very limited. This is in sharp contrast to the delivery of competency-based training in a number of other countries. The preference for classroom delivery has resulted in limited examples of learning and assessment arrangements that take place in the workplace, and the use of different terminology (e.g. workplace learning and on-the-job training) to mean the same thing. 


The use of different terminology, while inevitable amongst lay people, can be a source of confusion and indicative of a need for a conceptual framework for those working within a particular system. The study was conducted in two stages, stage one examined the current delivery modes and ways in which workplace learning was valued; stage two consists of four semi-ethnographic case studies of workplace learning.