National Qualification Frameworks can provide greater transparency of what qualifications mean and they can offer a way of developing learning pathways that people can follow throughout their lifetime. They are developed or planned in many countries and the approaches to NQF vary from one country to another. Experience has taught us that discussions on NQF touch all key aspects of a country’s VET system, both in terms of its relations with other parts of the education and training system and with the labour market. These discussions therefore provide good opportunities to give direction and coherence to national VET reform initiatives. As a start they imply dialogue and cooperation between representatives from different sectors of education and the world of work.
The ETF started NQF projects in EECA and MEDA countries in 2005. These projects don't aim at developing National Qualification Frameworks, but researching and facilitating the VET reform policy debate and clarifying the possible implications of NQF for countries in the regions. The projects have a strong emphasis on regional cooperation and are based on facilitating policy learning by national stakeholders. Knowledge sharing with peers from EU and neighbouring countries is particularly promoted as an efficient and effective approach for becoming familiar with technical and policy issues. The development of a pilot Qualification Framework for the Tourism / Hospitality sector will provide participants with hands on experience of technical, institutional and policy aspects. In the course of the project participants will be able to draft informed national NQF strategy papers for wider discussion with policymakers and other stakeholders.
A National Qualification Framework is a framework that links existing qualifications of different levels and types in a coherent and consistent way based on a common and agreed set of descriptors and criteria. Despite the differences among countries there appear to be three main elements common to all NQFs: reference levels describing types of skill and knowledge in various qualifications, quality assurance principles and guidelines, and methods for recognising learning gained in different programmes and contexts. Qualifications are often specified in terms of learning outcomes or competences, which describe what an individual is expected to be able to do and know as a result of the learning undertaken in the course of study, emphasising the capacity to integrate skills, knowledge and attitudes in the application of learning.
The experience of countries that have developed frameworks for their qualifications shows that the process takes time, requires considerable resources (human and financial) and a thorough consultation with and participation of the various stakeholders. They include the education and training community, employers, unions, different government ministries (such as the ministries of labour and education), and the university sector. It is assumed that NQFs provide strong incentives and good opportunities for vocational education and training providers to develop and organise appropriate learning processes. National Qualification Frameworks can be considered to provide overall quality assurance mechanisms. It is because of the obvious relationship between quality of learning processes and quality of learning outcomes that a debate about NQF will necessarily touch all major VET reform policy issues.
ETF partner countries, in developing policies and strategies for the reform of their vocational education and training systems, are facing the challenge of transforming VET systems that have traditionally been based on various forms of “input control” (number of students, number of qualified teaching staff, centralised and uniform curricula that are subject based etc.) towards systems that are governed and funded largely on the basis of agreed learning outcomes and the quality of learning processes. Most countries have piloted standards for individual occupations but have not been able to develop overall coherent qualification frameworks. Similarly, most countries have piloted curriculum changes related to single occupations or programmes without being able to develop an overall and consistent curriculum approach. Moreover, most of the earlier standard and curriculum work, while seeking a departure of the former knowledge-based approaches has often been based on narrow skill concepts for simple and standardised occupations and tasks. These are currently considered to be obsolete as they do not properly prepare learners for employability in employment systems that are characterised by high levels of uncertainty. These require broader competences enabling flexibility and further learning. Earlier standards and curriculum work has also almost everywhere neglected middle and higher levels of qualifications.
Building on the experience made so far with the modernisation of curricula, many EECA countries are currently reviewing their so called “classifiers”, the lists of occupations for which recognised vocational education and training programmes exist. Classifiers, however, normally only include qualifications at certain levels of education and occupations and programmes that existed during the period of mass production in large state-owned industrial, administrative and agricultural enterprises. These have become outdated and no longer reflect the need for qualifications on the labour market. They also tend to focus only on formal education and training as provided by the public education system. The need to create open education pathways within formal education and to recognise learning achieved through non- and informal learning is growing. MEDA countries face similar challenges.