30. Who certifies labour competencies?

According to the system involved, the certification of labour competencies can be carried out by:

The vocational training institution where the worker took the training courses or where the required competencies were assessed for the certificate.

An independent organisation that works with certification of competencies.

There is often a debate arising from the situation of having two options which is explicit some of the times and not so in some other occasions. In many cases, the fact that there is limited knowledge about how certification systems work results in people favouring one or other alternative, without having analysed much. As it is usually the case with institutional designs, the least successful option is always the one which seeks to transfer, without much consultation, a successful model in a particular situation and context into another environment which is often different.

Experiences about certification in Latin America have shown that the most important aspect is the quality and impartiality in which the process is carried out and not who actually certifies. An assessment process of quality may well be developed by the same institution that was in charge of training. In the same way, this institution must work together with representatives from companies and workers in order to ensure that competency standards and assessment actions are relevant and reliable. The assessment has to guarantee that results are reliable, impartial and valid. But, at the same time, a good assessment needs the appropriate environments, the connection with the labour world and the knowledge on techniques of collection of evidence; and training institutions and centres have great advantages in this sense.

The discussion about the implementation or adaptation of a particular model should take this into account since in many cases, there is a tendency of automatically transferring the structure of the certification of processes or goods to the scope of certification and recognition of people’s competencies. Training institutions are very much prepared to carry out the training process, and the assessment that leads to the certificate is, above all, a formative assessment. A research conducted recently by the European Union showed the differences among the national certification models(1) of Germany, Belgium, France and England. Although all countries share the objective of keeping a training model capable of providing answers of quality to the demand of companies and considering the largest amount of youngsters and adults, the institutional arrangements are not the same. In the following chart, distinctive characteristics of several national cases are compared.(2)

The model of the United Kingdom insisted on the separation of the trainer, the assessor and the certifier. Such separation is done as a means of assuring the quality and transparency of the certificate. Certification bodies are, in many cases, institutions which have existed for a long time and which have represented the interests of unions from their initial stages. There is not a tradition of national training institutions or of social dialogue which may arise during
the processes of elaborating competencies.

In Great Britain, it was not until the end of the 19th Century, after the Technical Education Act was officially announced in 1889, that organisations such as the “City and Guilds of London Institute” were allowed to make agreements about technical education and its certification by working with local councils. Certification was left to the initiative of a broad series of examination boards. They considered certification as business but they intended to settle it in all professions.

Source: CEDEFOP, Certification and legibility of competencies, 2001.

In Latin America, great advances are being done in order to build up models that respond to the needs of countries, instead of replying to an argument based on the success of an experience not yet proved. In Mexico, after more than seven years of work, CONOCER is now concentrated on giving more relevance to its competency standard with respect to the needs and language of enterprises. After a great effort developing standards, certification was actually registered as a bottleneck. It showed that certifications are not demanded for all areas of performance and that it is necessary to narrow the mechanisms related with the costs and limits it may impose on the poorest workers.

In Colombia, SENA has gained, in the last 5 years, a wide experience in making up “sectoral working groups” in which entrepreneurs together with workers, local representatives and people from educational institutions develop processes of sectoral characterisation, competencies identification and elaboration and validation of training programmes.(3)

The programme Chile Califica has advanced in standardisation and certification experiences and promoted the independence between certification and training. Note that in the Chilean model, financing has been separated from implementation; and now, with the introduction of certifying bodies, a quality assurance mechanism is carried out on training bodies. However, a surprising characteristic of this case is the fact that there is no separation between the one who assesses and the one who certifies. After different tests, they noticed that in this context it was less convenient to carry out these two processes in different institutions.

But this is not the only possible arrangement: ISO 17024 standard, which is applicable to certification bodies, states: “a certification body could provide training, if it does so, it should clearly show the way in which it deals with the separation between assessment and training in order to guarantee confidentiality, objectivity and impartiality”.(4)

In short, the answer to this question depends on the institutional design and on what social actors feel it more convenient to obtain a transparent, effective and qualified certification system. Even when analysing the institutional design it is important to consider the perspective of the drives for certification. Alexim and Lopes (2004) describe three trends: the first one is originated in huge companies which are interested in certification as a mechanism associated to insertion policies. The second one is the educational trend which embraces the efforts made in order to create national systems of recognition of competencies associated with the possibilities of both entering or re-entering the educational system and the labour market. Finally, the labour market trend whose hallmark is the recognition of competencies acquired and aggregated throughout the working experience.(5)

There are different actors and drives in each of these trends, as well as different institutional arrangements. Undoubtedly, social dialogue mechanisms are fundamental when defining how a specific system is designed.

 

 

 

 

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1 Bouder, Annie et al, Certification and legibility of competencys, CEDEFOP, 2001.
2 Vargas, F., “Cuatro afirmaciones sobre certificación. Todas falsas”, in Cinterfor/ILO’s Bulletin Nº 153, 2002.
3 More information at www.sena.edu.co /sistema nacional de formación para el trabajo
4 ISO 17024 Standard “General requirements for bodies operating certification of persons”.
5 Alexim, João Carlos; Lopes Evangelio, Carmen Lucia, “A Certificação profissional revisitada”, in Boletín Técnico SENAC, 2003.

 

 

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