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BULLETIN 152
Labour competency and the evaluation of learning

Inter-American Technical Bulletin on Vocational Training, 2002

 

(Full text available only in Spanish)

 

 

THIS ISSUE

 

 

 

CONTENTS
João Carlos Alexim	Certification in the domains of vocational training and the labour market
Daniel Hernández	Certification policies in Latin America
Raimundo Vossio Brígido	The certification and standardization of competencies. Origins, concepts and practices
María Irigoin Fernando Vargas	The certification of competencies. From the concept to the systems
Edith Kirsch	Evaluating acquired experience. Between certification norms and the uniqueness of work careers
Annie Bouder Laurence Coutrot Edith Kirsch Jean-Louis Kirsch Josiane Paddeu Alain Savoyant Emmanuel Sulzer	The certification and legibility of competency
Francisca Ma. Arbizu Echavarri	The perspective of the national system of qualifications and vocational training in Spain. Transparency, recognition and the quality of competencies
Ministerio del Trabajo y Previsión Social, Perú	Challenges in the construction of training model by competencies
Fundación Chile	Progress of the project of labor competency certification and the quality of qualifications
Confederación Europea de Sindicatos (CES)	Framework of activity for the lifelong development of competencies and qualifications
George Gamerdinger	Trends in the recognition of skills and in certification. The role of training frameworks based on competencies from the perspective of the English Caribbean
Francisco Aparecido Cordão	Vocational Certification in Brazil

 

THIS ISSUE

This bulletin looks at a current reality in this so-called information and knowledge society; namely the way in which the acquisition of labour competencies are accepted and valued.

It is clear that the better preparation of workers and their full development are decisive factors in a country's competitiveness. In general, certificates, diplomas and qualifications have been the best references both for workers and for employers when taking decisions about contracting, qualifying, remunerating and promoting people in the market and in the company itself. The way in which these forms of recognition are obtained is being analyzed in greater and greater depth.

Enormous changes are taking place, regional integration processes and free trade treaties are weakening national borders. In this production situation, knowledge is acquiring new value as a key factor in productivity and therefore in competitiveness.

In the face of countless changes of all kinds, the recognition of competencies has been seen as a response to the need to explicitly value what people know and what they can do, irrespective of the ways in which they developed their capabilities or acquired their knowledge.

Many countries have had to face up to the reality of reforming and updating their institutional arrangements to adjust training to meet these new demands. Against this background, work experience has been clearly identified as a source of competency, and there is acceptance of the need to set up clear recognition mechanisms which would facilitate workers' mobility and their access to offers of training in a trajectory that continues throughout life.

Increasingly, education and training are being identified as producers of citizens capable not only of working but also of relating effectively and participating in social and family life. The paths which bring these two worlds, education and work, closer together tend to merge in the philosophy of lifelong training. The valuation of competencies has, and in the future will have, a lot to do with this.

In addition, the raising of qualification levels in many occupations, as well as intensified demand for jobs that are often scarce, are putting the spotlight on the need to recognize and value competencies irrespective of how they might have been acquired and under the different modalities of training. This is why this bulletin includes a number of articles on conceptual discussions and national experiences that have to do with the way in which competencies are recognized through what is often called the certification process.

To this end, this bulletin is organized in two parts; the first has been called "Conceptualization" and includes various studies which look at the origins, characteristics and challenges of certification and related processes. The second part aims at presenting a sample of focuses and national experiences, which are all the fruit of the unceasing work and activity that is currently under way throughout the region.

To open the analysis, we have an article by João Carlos Alexim, who, after presenting a brief account of the subject, tackles the ideal construction of a model of vocational certification. In this he describes the methodologies, institutionalization and components of certification, its role in the world of work and adjustment to the new economy, and the recognition of knowledge acquired by people throughout their whole lives. In the last paragraph he sounds a warning about those who seem to prefer spontaneous sectorial initiatives by economic agents, which could lead to exclusion and social inequity.

In Policies of competency certification for Latin America, Daniel Hernández concentrates on the reasons which moved the various actors to interest themselves in the subject; these are not the same for all of them, and they demand different kinds of responses. Certification cannot be transplanted from one country to another because it is not only an economic and educational phenomenon, it goes far beyond that, it has to do with how societies, work and people perceive themselves and communicate with each other.

Raimundo Vossio Brígido analyzes the various factors which gave rise to the subject of competency standardization and certification, represented by the Japanese Toyota model and the Volvo factory in Sweden, and the crisis in vocational training systems. These should not still be training people for the redundant Fordist-Taylorist model of work, but allow people to be capable, competent and competitive in a world of dizzying changes, and provide society with people who are equipped to face up to them.

The article by María Irigoin and Fernando Vargas deals with a typology of the different competency certification systems. The authors abstract general concepts from the different experiences that there are so as to construct an abstract model of the processes, profiles, levels and technical components which a national certification system must have, avoiding mystification and arbitrary transliterations which do not respond to the need but to individual cases with characteristic traditions.

In The evaluation of acquired experience, Edith Kirsch asserts that all evaluation has a contingent component and this presents a paradox for competency certification: that general norms are used to evaluate informal knowledge born of experience that is necessarily unique. A certificate, she says, is above all a consensual convention between a number of social actors.

The certification and legibility of competency is an extensive work produced by a group of researchers from the European Center of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP in Spanish). Because of its depth, it constitutes a key component in this part of the consideration of the certification and standardization of competencies. As a way of reviewing national peculiarities and clearing the way towards the essentials of the subject, the authors analyze the history of certification in five European states. They show the close links that unite the world of production and training arrangements, and also the fundamental role that states play when it comes to constructing educational systems that are coherent and adapted to their immediate needs.

Francisca María Arbizu Echavarri, director of the National Qualifications Institute of Spain, opens the second part of this bulletin, which centers on different concrete experiences of the construction of national systems of competency standardization and certification. Recently, in Spain, an organic legal framework was enacted which will allow formal systems of vocational training to be linked to people's recognized, evaluated and certified learning. This will help them to move from one system to the other so as to improve their employability, foster permanent training, return to a more competitive economy, and facilitate worker mobility inside the European Union in line with the economic and demographic needs of the region.

Next there is a paper issued by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security of Peru. In that country, the state is trying to mobilize a heterogeneous situation. Although the modern companies need a system of correctly evaluated and accredited vocational competencies, the real situation obliges us to bear in mind other aspects and training arrangements which are oriented to the informal and marginal sectors of the economy. This again raises the question of the existence of mixed training systems which reflect the different economic realities inside a nation seeking to reconstruct areas for conciliation between the various social actors after the interruption of democracy.

The third paper is a summary of the results of the Project of Labor Competency Certification and Qualification Quality in Chile. This is a case of an economy which is growing and expanding. The project, which is financed by a loan from international organizations, concentrates on a number of key economic areas that are important for the economic life of the nation, and is directed by the Chile Foundation. Its aim is to construct a system in these areas, and then to demonstrate its efficiency and viability and extend it to the rest of the country in the near future.

The next article is a declaration by European employers' and union associations, both public and private, whose objective is to evolve a framework for lifelong training which would develop competencies and qualifications, and coordinate the scattered efforts being made in this field in the European Union.

After that there is the transcript of the presentation made by Mr. G. Gamerdinger at the Tripartite Inter-American Seminar on Vocational Training, Productivity and Decent Work, held in Rio de Janeiro from 15 to 17 May 2002. This deals with experience in this field in the English- and Dutch- speaking Caribbean, which covers many heterogeneous nations that are all facing a common challenge: to meet the need to develop their human resources in order to cope with the decline in agricultural production and tourism, and the emigration of their qualified workers.

The last article in this bulletin is by Francisco Cordão; it reiterates his presentation at the National Seminar on Vocational Certification held at the ILO headquarters in Brasilia in April 2002, and contains a series of reflections on the subject which illustrate the Brazilian experience very well.

We believe that the ways in which society recognizes and values competencies should not only represent the needs of the key sectors and accredit the quality of people, it goes further than that: it should also be a democratizing tool which would take account of what people have learned throughout their lives, recognize their knowledge and help them in the transition from backward and informal sectors of the economy to more modern and more competitive areas. This does not only have an economic goal, it is also one of the many ways to make people's work decent.

 

 

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