The need to move beyond transparency of qualifications

Introduction

Transparency concerns the visibility of qualifications and competencies in terms of their content and value, while transferability describes whether an individual can use a qualification or competence in new occupational or educational environments, beyond where it was acquired. Strategies seeking to increase transparency and transferability must build on a clear understanding of the distinction between the concepts of qualification and competence. Of particular concern is the tendency to subsume (potentially) complex competencies into (potentially) narrower formally defined qualifications. This “formalisation” of non-formal and informal learning can be of great value yet also risks distorting the way “real life” competencies are described and valued. Drawing inspiration from initiatives at the European and national level, this article argues that this “reductionist effect” needs to be better understood to inform the way future strategies on transparency and transferability are developed and implemented.

The article briefly explores the question: are existing transparency tools focusing too much on formal qualifications, underestimating the important role played by competencies acquired at work, at home or during leisure time?

European transparency instruments – orientation and strategic priorities

European transparency instruments have been developed over the last three decades and have to some extent influenced national policies and practices.¹ A recent publication of Cedefop (2024b) observes that these initiatives are connected by a shared learning outcomes perspective and thus potentially can promote a balanced picture of learning inside and outside the formal education and training system. While the report acknowledges that progress has been made towards transparency, moderate synergies between initiatives mean that end-users benefitting only to a limited extent in the form of transferability and more flexible learning progression.

We identify two main causes for this limited impact. Firstly, European transparency instruments are “locked” into formal education and training sectors (higher education, VET) with distinct borderlines. Instruments tend to operate within the sector (“silo”). A fair amount of sector protectionism is thus in operation, undermining individual needs for flexible progress and the notion that all learning, irrespectively of where and how it has been acquired, is valid. Secondly, this lock-in effect promotes a focus on qualifications rather than on competencies.

To a certain extent, the implementation of qualifications frameworks and the introduction of validating prior learning both exemplify this lock-in effect and drive towards “formalisation of non-formal and informal learning”. Most EU countries consider validating non-formal and informal learning in reference to standards created and used by formal institutions (cf. Villalba-García 2017). This subsumes (potentially) complex competencies into (potentially) narrower qualifications. European and national transparency strategies need to escape this “silo” lock-in and promote a learning outcomes approach capturing the characteristics of both qualifications and competencies, thus creating a basis for accumulation of learning across learning contexts.

What lies beyond formal learning? The conceptual basis for transparency and transferability of qualifications and competencies

Although the distinction between formal, non-formal and informal establishes formal learning as the reference point (cf. Colley/Hodkinson/Malcom 2003) and creates an inherit hierarchy of knowledge (cf. Singh 2015), it says little about the content of the learning that has taken place. This issue is further accentuated by the fact that the borderline between formal and (in particular) non-formal learning differs significantly between countries and sectors (cf. Cedefop 2024a).² Reflecting this lack of clarity, the difference between the terms qualification and competence provides a better conceptual basis for developing and improving transparency instruments.

Although potentially different in scope and depth, qualifications and competences competencies can both be described in terms of learning outcomes. Learning is a multi-faceted process with many different interpretations on how, what, when or why people learn. Nevertheless, when using learning outcomes for transparency applied to qualifications or competencies, two dimensions are relevant for describing the overall nature of the learning in question: the scope or breadth of the learning outcomes, and their level or depth.³

Concerning scope and breadth, it is important to identify the domains of knowledge and skills which have been covered and to describe their borderlines. Different learning processes will vary significantly (on a scale from narrow to broad) as regards the scope of theoretical knowledge or practical skills acquired. There is a danger prioritising some dimensions more than others. Parts of the formal education system may emphasise theoretical knowledge at the expense of practical knowledge, while working life may overemphasise practical skills. This has implications for the overall identification, documentation, assessment and certification (validation) of learning acquired in different contexts, their transparency as well as their transferability.

The level of the learning outcomes can be understood as a varying degree of complexity of the content learnt. When it comes to qualifications, reference is often made to a hierarchy of institutions. For example, it is taken for granted that universities convey knowledge at a more advanced and complex level than upper secondary schools. This hierarchy of institutions is one of the key building blocks in qualification frameworks. Such an indirect approach of conveying the complexity of learning outcomes is insufficient for transparency purposes and must be replaced by descriptions on the content and specific characteristics of the outcomes in question. Using formal qualification levels as reference for competence acquired in working life can be misleading. A learning unit linked to a specific function or technology can be relevant for individuals with different formal qualifications. A learning unit, related, for example, to artificial intelligence, hygiene standards or ethics, may be as relevant for someone with a doctorate at EQF level 8 as for someone with a trade certificate at EQF 4. It thus makes little sense to lock the outcomes of learning at a qualification level alone. This does not exclude the use of these outcomes for formal qualifications, but they need to relate to individual actual competence in a way which is genuine and not distorted from the outset, and which provides a better starting point for validation processes overall.

How to capture the diversity and richness of competencies – a Norwegian experiment

The project “A Norwegian approach to microcredentials”⁴ was completed in June 2024. It puts forward a proposal (cf. NOU 2025) observing that work-based training and competence developments often operate “in the shadow” of formal initial and further education and training and that this makes it difficult for individual employees to make use of these outcomes for career development and further learning and education.⁵ It also prevents companies from overviewing and making use of existing competencies. To remedy this situation, several steps are outlined:

• a common (digitalised) record of competence⁶ that facilitates competence building over time should be developed and serve employees as well employers;
• a record of competence should make it easier to identify and document what the individual has learned. Records of competence can directly support companies and industries and provide a better basis for business-internal skills development strategies;
• a record of competence should ensure that individuals can systematically build on their own learning results internally at a company, at other companies, or within the education system as a basis for validation of prior learning;
• the individual should be able to collect records of competence in a (digital) “competence portfolio” which allows for a clear presentation for the individual and potential future users;
• the record of competence should be rooted in an industry or activity area, but recognisable in other industries or activity areas and;
• it should be anchored nationally but be recognised and relevant internationally.

The project recommends that records of competence are anchored to working life and not to the education and training system.⁷ This reflects that the competence records are primarily seeking to increase the visibility and value of learning taking place outside the formal system.

It is emphasised from the outset that a record of competence must capture both learning processes (input) and learning outcomes. Although the description of the learning outcomes plays a crucial role in increasing the visibility of the competence, the accumulation of learning outcomes also requires information regarding input: Who is behind a course or measure, what it required in terms of work effort and what assessment (if any) has been carried out?

The introduction of a joint and national record of competence must be based on dialogue supporting ownership and trust. This requires involvement from industries, course providers and public authorities alike. The latter to enable integration of records into digital registers at national and European level. The Norwegian project therefore decided to follow the European learning model (ELM) introduced by Europass in 2019 that creates a data infrastructure around digital credentials. While addressing the needs of Norwegian stakeholders, the proposal builds on existing European norms for the presentation of learning, rooted in both the education system and working life.⁸ The proposed structure for the record of competence departs from recently published European recommendations related to the presentation of learning outcomes from/for education and working life (EQF-Europass project group, 2024). These recommendations can be summarised as follows and overlap the conceptual clarifications made in this paper. It is necessary to:

• describe the overall goal of a course/activity and what kind of context (including input factors) it is part of;
• clarify the scope and breadth of the learning outcome in question, showing its nature;
• describe the depth, complexity and/or level of the learning in question. Different degrees of expertise will have been acquired within the same area or domain.

The interaction between these three elements facilitates making the learning results visible both to the person receiving the record of competence and to users at companies and educational institutions.

Lessons regarding transparency and transferability of learning outcomes

The conceptual reflections in this article, combined with European and Norwegian experience, underline three main lessons.

• Transparency of qualifications is important but must be combined with increased visibility of competencies.
• Transparency of qualifications and competencies is not an aim in itself but must facilitate transferability of outcomes and more flexible learning pathways.
• Transparency and transferability must be developed on a cross-sector and cross-country basis, seeking to strengthen bridges rather than borderlines between silos.

These lessons point to the need to systematically capture and document the content and characteristics of the diverse outcomes of learning processes, wherever they occur. This requires ongoing development of the learning outcomes perspective and its nuances to support overall understanding and trust. This learning outcomes-based approach to transparency can be applied to qualifications and competencies alike and provide the foundation for the accumulation of a wide range of learning outcomes, including initial qualifications, certificates from continuing training, microcredentials, or outcomes from company internal training and learning.

Digital technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), can support this approach by creating better conditions for storage, access and comparison of information on qualifications and competencies and their associated learning outcomes. This very much depends on the existence of robust and agreed controlled vocabularies of learning outcomes that specify and capture learning in a precise and valid way. A conceptual blurred approach to qualifications and competencies will confuse the (increasingly important) AI-generated overviews and summaries for individuals and companies.

The Norwegian project illustrates the potential of industry-based and national approaches in this area. Building initiatives “bottom up” can ensure ownership and trust. However, as demonstrated by numerous European and national pilot-projects over the last decades, fragmentation is a real danger reducing relevance and impact. Bottom-up approaches cannot operate in isolation and must communicate with other initiatives. This is why the Norwegian project followed the European learning model (ELM) that sets possibilities for interconnection across sector and countries. The message is that local and national developments need to be based on a clear and shared conceptual basis allowing for dialogue across borderlines, whether between sectors, industries or countries.

Jens Bjørnåvold
Expert, Centre for Vocational training and Work Life Learning, University of Agder, Norway

Ernesto Villalba-García
Expert Cedefop, Thessaloniki, Greece

(A German translation of the article has been published in BWP 2/2025)