The purpose of the NQF is to:
1. Improve the understanding of the education and training system as a whole and its constituent parts.
2. Promote access, transfer and progression into, within and between programmes of learning.
3. Provide an instrument of accountability or control of the education and training system.
4. Enhance the quality of provision, or make it more consistent.
5. Promote improvement in the quality of education and training.
6. Ensure uniform provision of competency-based training, assessment and certification systems.
7. Provide an organised, coherent structure to the competency standards.
8. Promote and maintain procedures for access to learning, transfer of learning and progression in learning.
9. Provide a system of coordination and for comparing qualifications by relating qualifications to each other.
10 Establish national standards of knowledge, skills and wider competencies.