School should prepare children and youth for life, and not for school: as we all know, this is an old statement, witnessing today a fresh renewal.

Several decades ago, the term ‘life skills’ emerged in relationship to the need to address elements that could help learners to cope with risks, decision-making, emergency situations and survival strategies.

‘Life skills’ also addressed the need to foster learners’ personal development, help them unfold their potential and enjoy an accomplished private, professional and social life. In fact, the concept of “life skills” was progressively associated with education aimed essentially at acquisition of certain behaviours.

More recently, the term ‘life skills’ tends to be assimilated with ‘competencies for life’, understood in a broader sense as ‘capabilities’ (knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, behaviours) to face challenges of daily (private, professional and social) life and exceptional situations successfully and also to envisage a better future.

The Dakar Framework for Action gave new impetus to the promotion of quality in education, recognizing that Education For All (EFA) can only be achieved if the education provided is improved in ways that ensure that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programmes.

Essential economic, social and other changes in recent years have required us to redefine quality education. “Despite the different contexts, there are many common elements in the pursuit of a quality education, which should equip all people, women and men, to be fully participating members of their own communities and also citizens of the world. Understood like this, quality education requires us to redefine the parameters of education in such a way as to cover certain basic knowledge, values, competencies and behaviours that are specifically attuned to globalisation but reflect the beauty and richness of our diversity expressed in different forms of belief, spirituality, culture, and language”,  (Communiqué from the Ministerial Round Table Meeting on “Quality Education”, 3 October 2003, UNESCO, Paris  http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php@URL_ID=16438&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html)

These changes have created a need for learning that goes beyond academic curriculum and factual knowledge and which also includes essential life skills, in addition to literacy and numeracy.

In the preparation of the ICE 47, we invite you to contribute to a debate on relationships between quality of education for all youth and competencies for life, and suggest the following questions as starting points for our exchange:

1.      Do you consider that the concepts of “life skills” and “competencies for life” are synonymous or different? When you think of or refer to “competencies for life” and “life skills”, what competencies do you include and see as a priority? And for what life?

2.      When embracing a ‘competencies for life’ approach, what are the implications and challenges for school education (curriculum, school- and classroom management, teaching and learning strategies, assessment, etc.) ?

3.      What is your understanding of the relationship between quality of education and competencies for life, in your own context and at a global scale?

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