A STAY-AT-HOME mum for four years, Madam Noraini Abu Bakar wanted to return to work to support her family but found the going difficult.

Now 44, the former customer service officer was rejected by a dozen firms as she did not have a formal education: she had left school at Secondary 3.

"Firms wanted workers in their 20s or 30s and wanted to see an O- or N-level cert. It was demoralising," said the mother of two daughters aged six and 22.

But a nationally recognised adult training certificate - which acts as an equivalent of the O- or N-levels - gave her a way back into the workforce.

Now a human resource manager at a security firm, she was one of 27 who received certificates yesterday under the Employability Skills System (ESS) training programme.

Introduced in 2004, the ESS is a modular training programme that certifies skills such as English for the workplace, computer literacy and problem solving.

About 130 employers, including the civil service, accept the ESS as an alternative to the N- or O-levels.

NTUC assistant secretary-general Halimah Yacob, who handed out the certificates, hoped more employers would accept the ESS as an alternative to formal education certificates.

Skills upgrading would also give a leg up to women wishing to return to the workforce, said Madam Halimah, who heads a national panel looking at ways to help out-of-work women find jobs.

Ministry of Manpower figures show the employment rate for women in the 50 to 54 age group last year was just 57.4 per cent, compared to 89.1 per cent for men.

"Skills upgrading will help but we also need to promote flexible work arrangements as many women with kids are not able to maintain full time work hours," she said.

"This will help more women stay in the workforce as well as get them to come back to work."

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