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. NQFs are meant to facilitate competency orientation in education and training, lifelong learning and mutual recognition of competency levels in the framework of labour migration. The development of NQFs has been dominated by national governments and donor organisations so far. This bears the risk of 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 which foster employability.
For an introduction into the topic from Markus Maurer: NQF: Key Features, Underlying Rationales and Role in International Cooperation
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On 12.11.2014 the e+i focal point invited Stephanie Allais to talk about "NQFs: what is in for the poor? Opportunities, Risks and Lessons Learned from South Africa." Stephanie Allais is a senior lecturer at the University of Johannesburg and is one of the most prominent researchers worldwide on the implementation of NQFs. Among other things, she conducted research for an international research project comparing NQFs in 16 countries for the ILO (see link below). Her presentation (see link to her slides and her text below) described her experience with the implementation of NQFs and its negative effects. She highlighted the risk of an excessive focus on standards, which can shift attention away from actual supply and delivery of VSD, and stressed the need to build and support educational institutions, especially in the context of weak institutions and limited resources. Evidence suggests this is a bigger risk when NQFs are intended to replace existing qualifications and to introduce substantial changes to education systems. More successful examples of NQFs are those primarily describing existing systems which is also the case for Switzerland's own NQF (see statement by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI below, in German only).
S. Allais: Paper: NQF: What's in it for the poor? Lessons from developing countries, Berne (2014)
S. Allais: Presentation: NQF: What's in it for the poor? Lessons from developing countries, Berne (2014)
S. Allais: The implementation and impact of National Qualification Frameworks, ILO (2010)
SBFI: NQR Berufsbildung und internationale Entwicklungen, Informationsnotiz
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On March 19, 2015, the e+i focal point invited Gunter Kohlheyer to share his long-standing experience with the development and implementation of national (vocational) qualifications frameworks in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and in dealing with developing and existing frameworks..
He emphasized on keeping frameworks as simple and lean as possible, and to rather focus on developing provision capacities than on heavy but empty frameworks for administrative use only. He made a strong argument that qualifications will only find acceptance if they are concrete, specialised and accepted by the world of work. The world of work needs therefore to be adequately involved in development, implementation and assessing the profiles. He pointed out that frameworks can actually serve development projects to enter a debate on the status of, access to, continuation in and quality of VSD offers with the world of work, with the government and with providers. The slides and some recommended background reading can be found below.
G. Kohlheyer: N(V)QFs
D. Raffe: Do we overestimate the potential of qualification frameworks? What are the opportunities and challenges at national, regional and international level? Edinburgh (2010)
P. Cort: Stating the Obvious: the European Qulaifications Framework is not a neural evidence-based policy tool, Denmark (2010)
DFID: Technical and vocational skills development, Skills and Qualification Framework (S. 10), (2007)
Further links
