COMPETENCY BASED TRAINING IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
Recent developments. Some experiences. January 2003

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4. COMPETENCY BASED TRAINING IN THE AMBIT OF PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING POLICIES. THE ROLE OF MINISTRIES OF LABOUR AND EDUCATION

Concern with improving the conditions of employability of human talent, and with creating national frameworks in which competencies acquired at work are recognized, has gradually stimulated increased intervention by Ministries of Labour and Education in the implementation of training models which respond to needs, in the framework of active employment policies.

Public concern with generating training activity which is highly relevant to employment and insertion in productive working life reached a high point in the region towards the end of the last decade. In that period, there were initiatives in various countries that were geared not only to increasing the offer of training but also to organizing frameworks or national systems based on standardization, training and the certification of competencies.

Without discarding the focus in question we can consider another perspective which is based fundamentally on the quantitative aspect; it centres on palliating the situation of groups that are vulnerable to unemployment. This other perspective incorporates a qualitative element more oriented to obtaining qualifications useful in productive life, certifiable and transferable competencies, rather than fragmented courses which are of limited duration and are difficult to follow.

Middle level or secondary education is being called in to make a considerable contribution to tackling the old theme of the dissociation between academic training and training for work. More and more countries, in their educational reforms, are adopting the focus of middle level or secondary education centered on the generation of competencies with a wide range of applications and therefore with less obsolescence and greater applicability in working life.

Technological education is generating a connection between education and training. These concepts, in the face of the new realities in the organization of the world of work, present differences that are more and more diffuse. The bases of science-based theoretical training are more and more in demand to cater to the new technologies and productive processes, which involve the massive incorporation of instruments and equipment. The handling of these requires more than mere manipulation, it demands programming, calibration, the analysis of parameters, and abstract thought.

In the debate between technical education which focuses on the training of workers in narrow occupational titles and the other, more generic kind of training which is oriented to training in competencies based on science and technology, and which does not have the odious characteristic of excluding mobility up to higher levels, it seems that the latter kind is winning. Therefore, the idea which is coming in more and more is that of opening up an educational line that continues for a whole lifetime, which dilutes the differentiation between types of education, and which recognizes that while competencies can be acquired in different ways they are always helping to build up the worker's intellectual assets.

The Ministries of Labour in Brazil, Chile and Uruguay provide a group of experiences that bear on this subject. In Brazil between 1998 and 2001, a project to study world experiences of certification was mounted by the Secretary of Vocational Training (at that time called SEFOR) of the Ministry of Labour and Employment (www.mte.gov.br), with technical support from the ILO. Its aim was to table elements for national discussion in the framework of a reference group made up of representatives from employers' associations, unions, public and private teaching bodies, and then jointly establish a system with certification mechanisms that would tend to make training more relevant and raise the performance levels and the employability of the workforce.

The project was an important conceptual step forward. Among other things it paved the way for compiling a list of the most significant experiences in training and certification by competencies, and the production of a methodological manual on the analysis of work and labour competency 13.

Between 1998 and 2000 in Uruguay there was a project to establish a system of training and certification by competencies. It was run by the National Employment Bureau (DINAE) of the Ministry of Labour (www.mtss.gub.uy/dinae.htm), with financial help from the IDB. At the start, a tripartite consultancy group was organized in which there was intense social dialogue. The ultimate objective was to define a model for a training and certification system, to this end it conducted a series of studies of international models and implemented pilot applications, and this led to the development of competency norms and some certification activity14.

 

 

 

 

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13. This is the publication: Qualitative Analysis of Work, Evaluation and Competency Certification. Methodological References, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Brasilia, 2002.
14. A complete account of the products of this project are at http://www.oitcinterfor.org/public/english/region/ampro/cinterfor/temas/complab/observ/index.htm

 

 

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