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TVET Council Barbados
TVET Council Barbados
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Employment & Training Fund (ETF)

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  • Employment & Training Fund (ETF)

Overview

The Employment and Training Fund (ETF) can assist your business with improving the performance and productivity of the staff. The ETF promotes and supports training and upgrading of skills for the labour force.

The ETF’s primary focus is to provide grants to encourage the private sector to expand and upgrade its employee training programmes. Benefits are two-fold:

Your workforce upgrades its skills and your business becomes more competitive

You can recover some or all of your company’s contributions to the Training Levy, once your business trains staff according to the conditions of the fund

In this section find out more about the ETF – how to access it, what conditions apply, as well as priority areas. Use the links below to get started.

Eligibility

Those eligible for support from the Employment and Training Fund (ETF) are:

Employers

Recognised public and private training institutions

Recognised employer and employee associations

Grants are not provided to individual employees and students. Furthermore, the ETF does not support training programmes involving university degrees and professional qualifications.

Policies

The Employment and Training Fund (ETF) provides grants for both training and assessment to business associations, employers, private and public training institutions. To provide this service effectively requires the submission and review of applications, the preparation and issuing of contracts, the processing of the relevant disbursements under these contracts and obtaining feedback from recipients on their experience.

In an effort to explain the intricacies involved in this process, and to simplify and streamline the experience of stakeholders with the fund, the ETF would like to outline the following policies.

Read Policies
  1. Applications to the ETF for training must satisfy a minimum of 24 contact hours per trainee, except in special cases.
  2. Applications to the ETF should be for a minimum of five (5) persons per training cohort.
  3. Applications are to be submitted on or before the published ETF deadline dates.
  4. Assessor fees are determined based on the number of units in the qualification. The rates for Assessors are found on the TVET Council’s Assessor rate sheet.
  5. It is highly recommended that a single Assessor should have no more than six (6) portfolios to assess on any given assessment contract. Furthermore, Centres should take great care to maintain the quality of the assessment process by ensuring that Assessors are not contracted to assess more than a reasonable number of portfolios at any one time.
  6. Contracts are signed with an effective date within the month of the Council Meeting when the approval was given.
  7. The ETF provides:
    1. Funding of up to 75% of the proposed training cost, or a maximum of $200.00 per contact training hour, whichever is less, for qualifying training applications;
    2. Grants of up to a maximum of 75% of the proposed assessment cost for the qualifying assessment applications, as stipulated by the TVET Council’s Assessment rates for Levels 1 and 2. The 75% ceiling for assessments will affect both assessor and internal verifier fees;
    3. Funding may be granted for up to 100% of the cost for N/CVQ Assessments for Level 3 and above.
  8. If applicants are applying for training in a qualification area that is an N/CVQ, then it is expected that an application will also be submitted for assessment at the same time. It is recommended that both training and assessment be done simultaneously.
  9. Funding is provided for training exams, only if the training is for an accredited international training programme.
  10. ETF funding will not be approved for books, training manuals, stationery or assessment material. Instead the applicant should be encouraged to provide these manuals electronically.
  11. ETF funding will not be approved for assessment equipment, overheads, and so on.
  12. An ETF Training contract will be considered to be outstanding if final completion reports are not submitted within 15 working days of the date of completion of the contract (i.e. the final disbursement date in the Disbursement Schedule in Appendix B of the Contract). Contracts may be terminated after this date. An ETF contract is defined to be outstanding only if the fault of the contract not being concluded lies with the Applicant /Centre.
  13. An assessment contract will be considered to be outstanding; if the final completion reports are not submitted within 15 working days after the expiry of the period of one year allowed for the duration of assessment contracts. This one year period starts from the effective date stated on the front page of the contract. Contracts may be terminated after this date.
  14. An applicant must wait two (2) years before reapplying to the ETF for funding for a program for which the pass rate was below 70% when last funded by the ETF. The two (2) years will be counted from the date of the final disbursement on the particular contract. In order to have a subsequent contract considered the Centre is expected to provide evidence that the reasons for the low pass rate on the previous contract were adequately addressed.
  15. Where an Applicant/ Centre has another contract outstanding in the same qualification area, a new contract will not be considered by the ETF.
  16. If an Applicant/Centre has more than one qualification approved, that Applicant/Centre is allowed to have a total number of outstanding ETF contracts equal to the number of approved qualifications.
  17. ETF funding will not be approved for any Assessor or Internal Verifier who is a full time employee at a Centre. However, where Assessors and Internal Verifiers who are employed part-time are working on portfolios at a Centre, funding will be provided.
  18. Applicants for a new or special program which cannot be mapped to any existing N/CVQ may still receive funding even though the certificate will not be linked to an N/CVQ. A recommendation may be made advising the TVET Council’s Technical Officer to consider:
    1. Having the new special program added as a unit that is optional on the existing N/CVQ;
    2. Having the existing standard reviewed and upgraded or;
    3. Enquiring if the applicant/Centre is desirous of having a new N/CVQ developed.
  19. An applicant which is not a Centre may apply to the ETF to have training done at an approved Centre as long as there are contributing to the Training Levy and can produce a NIS Clearance Certificate.
  20. An applicant which is not a Centre (even if in the process of their application being processed) may apply to the ETF for funding as long as they are contributing to the Training Levy and can produce a NIS Clearance Certificate:
  21. The applicant may offer non N/CVQ training and exams even if not a Centre; they may offer N/CVQ training but will need to have the assessments applied for and undertaken by an approved Assessment Centre.
  22. Any applicant may ask an Approved Assessment Centre to apply for and execute both the N/CVQ training and assessment on their behalf.

While TVETC endeavours to supply accurate information within this page, errors and omissions may occur. Furthermore, TVETC reserves the right to make changes to this page at any time and without prior notice.

How to Apply

You can apply to the ETF in two ways:

1. Training institutions, employer associations, or trade unions that need funding, can apply for grants for training projects in accordance with national economic and social priorities. In the case of training institutions, training projects can benefit persons who are:

  • Already in the workforce and want to upgrade their skills
  • Retrenched and want to upgrade their skills, or acquire new skills
  • Unemployed and looking to enter the workforce for the first time

Interested persons should register with the institution that is conducting the training.

2. Employers can approach the ETF for a grant to subsidise the cost of training and retraining of their employees 
To apply, please click here or visit the Download Forms page below.

Download Forms

Employment and Training Fund (ETF) forms for prospective applicants and Training Grant awardees are available here for easy access. Click the links below to download.

For further information please refer to the ETF brochure or contact us to speak with the ETF's Business Development Officer.

ETF Brochure
874.00 KB
ETF Application Form
395.37 KB
Notice of Completion Form
49.17 KB
Training Performance Report Form
135.67 KB
Schedule for ETF Applications 2019
175.37 KB
Schedule for ETF Applications 2024
33.42 KB

Conditions

To receiving funding, training providers/employers must adhere to several conditions:

Proposed training must prepare participants for occupations that have new jobs projected, or a large number of jobs existing

Successful applicants must provide a valid Certificate of Clearance from the National Insurance Office before receiving grant funds

Training must be done in Barbados and be completed within 12 months

Employers must provide at least 25% of the cost of training

Training providers must be registered with the Barbados Accreditation Council

Priority Areas

Several areas of training are considered priority under the Employment and Training Fund. They include training that:

Is demand driven

Is conducted in a competence-based format using occupational standards as part of the curriculum

Leads to the award of the National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) or the Caribbean Vocational Qualification (CVQ)

Is focused on employee skills that are measurable and meet industry standards

High-demand occupations and industries with skill shortages are considered priority for training and assessment. Priority areas include:

Information Technology

Computer Assisted Design and Manufacturing

Solar Photovoltaic applications

Quality Management

Small Business Management

Customer Service

Food and Beverage Control

Property Maintenance

Boat Building

Nursery Care Services

Care of the Elderly

Agriculture

Schedule of ETF Deadlines & Application Review Meetings 2024

MONTHDEADLINES FOR ETF SUBMISSIONSETF APPLICATION MEETINGSCOUNCIL MEETINGS
MARCH9 February 202426 February14 March 2024
APRIL15 March 20242 April11 April 2024
MAY12 April 202430 April9 May 2024
JUNE10 May 202427 May13 June 2024
JULY14 June 20241 July11 July 2024
AUGUST12 July 202429 July8 August 2024
SEPTEMBER9 August 202426 August12 September 2024
OCTOBER13 September 202430 September10 October 2024
NOVEMBER11 October 202428 October14 November 2024
DECEMBER15 November 20242 December12 December 2024
JANUARY 202513 December 202430 December9 January 2025

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