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National qualification frameworks

Topic Profile Page

National qualifications frameworks (NQFs) are meant to act as a translation device to make national qualifications more readable across countries, promoting workers’ and learners' mobility. Developing NQFs has become an important field of development cooperation. However, different actors contest on pros and cons of NQFs and strongly disagree in their appraisal.

NQFs shall facilitate competency orientation in education and training, lifelong learning and mutual recognition of competency
levels in the framework of labour migration. National governments and donor organisations have dominated the development of NQFs so far. This bears the riskof creating artificial and academic competency profiles in VSD, detached from the world of work. Participatory approaches incorporating organisations of the world of work are more promising in terms of producing NQFs relevant to the labour market needs that foster employability.


Consider the introduction texts from Markus Maurer and SDCs NVQF tool (2016) for a start into the topic. 

​​​ Key Documents

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CEDEFOP
The report details Cedefop’s first cross-nation study of apprenticeships in the European Union. The point of departure for the study is what countries define and offer as apprenticeship training. It then applies a purposive approach to identifying the changes that apprenticeships are undergoing in practice, based on their design characteristics... [more]
Stephanie Allais-ILO
This is the report of an international research project conducted by the Skills and Employability Department of the ILO on the implementation of National Qualifications Frameworks (NQFs) and their use and impact. The research aimed to produce empirical evidence and analysis of countries’ experiences as a basis for advising countries on whether, and if so, then how, to introduce a qualifications framework as part of a strategy to achieve their wider skills development and employment goals.
UNESCO and other
the 2015 edition of the Global Inventory of Regional and National Qualifications Frameworks Volume II: National and Regional Cases serves as an observatory of progress made in the area of national qualifications frameworks (NQFs). Seven regional qualifications frameworks and the national cases of eighty-six countries, highlighted in the publication, illustrate that learning outcomes are useful tools for reforming education and training and promoting lifelong learning systems
Dr. Gunter Kohlheyer-SDC [453 kB]
This short tool was developed to help SDC practitioners and SDC partners in dealing with national (vocational) qualifications frameworks, a mega-trend spreading around the world. It is a small first-aid kit, not a comprehensive presentation and analysis of the topic. It puts together the basic ideas of NQFs, provides you with key analytical questions to be asked and key features to be supported, identifies typical vested interests, weaknesses and pitfalls of NQFs, suggests strategies to follow when engaged in concrete situations, and provides ideas on further reading.
Stephanie Allais [523 kB]
Paper presented to the Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency Wednesday, 12 November 2014, Berne.
Markus Maurer [496 kB]
Today, National Qualifications Frameworks (NQFs) are in the process of being developed and implemented the world over. The issue of formal skill specification and standardisation has been important for a long time for stakeholders in vocational and technical education and training (TVET) systems. In the context of accelerated economic globalisation and increasing international migration, skill standardisation has become one of the key domains of current reforms in the field of vocational skills development (VSD), many of which have also been formulated in order to promote lifelong learning and to thus facilitate the transition towards what has been called the knowledge society.