Quality Education and Competencies for Life

The workshop opened with a description of the rationales that inform the shift to competency-based approaches in education, namely: globalisation, development of ICTs, increased migration, spread of HIV/AIDS, increase in and changing nature of armed conflict, environmental degradation, and the exacerbation of social inequality.

A video based on the Finnish comprehensive school model, which demonstrated the increasingly participative and inquiry-based teaching and learning methods, set the scene for the workshop discussion. The discussion centred around three main questions:
1. What are the basic competencies for life and can an international standard set of competencies be agreed upon? The basic competencies were considered to include: literacy, numeracy, and life skills (i.e., communication, cooperation, negotiation as well as livelihood and entrepreneurship skills). Other life skills were discussed including “Learning to be” - learning to be an individual as well as a social being and a national and global citizen. In agreeing a set of competencies, three issues were highlighted: (i) the conceptual confusion that often surrounds discussion on competencies, (ii) the crucial importance of local conditions and (iii) the tensions between:
· Local and international realities
· The need to define context–specific competencies and the desire to establish international standards
· Competencies required for national development and cohesion and globalisation

2. How are competencies to be developed? In developing competencies the following points were stressed:
· Knowledge is integrated in social life
· Formal education is limited
· The curriculum cannot do everything
· Teachers also need to have appropriate competencies
· The school as a learning organisation: teachers need to be integrated in the management of schooling

3. How can competencies be assessed? The following points were made:
· The role of the community in assessing certain life skills must be considered
· The increased mobility in the global system needs accreditation.
· The recognition and accreditation of competencies acquired through informal learning experiences must also be considered.
· Moving away from “failure” to developing new level descriptions of skill scores that will reflect the transition of learners from one level of learning to another remains a challenging area for further research.