Should older qualifications be placed in NQFs?

Post added by Michael Graham

My travels for Europe (in particular for the European Training Foundation)  took me to the lovely city of Strasbourg a few weeks back, to participate in a meeting of qualifications experts from South-East Europe, chaired by the Council of Europe.

An unresolved issue, especially in South East Europe, is whether to place older qualifications in NQFs. There are, though, two issues here - legacy qualifications i.e. those which are no longer awarded and qualifications not based on learning outcomes. But there’s a strong overlap – while some legacy qualifications may be outcomes based, most are not.

At the meeting in Strasbourg, one argument put in favour of accommodating both legacy and non-outcomes qualifications says learning didn’t begin with learning outcomes, so let’s value them and place them in the NQF, likewise older qualifications more generally.

But is this a contradiction? NQFs are for reform in most countries, or at least in all developing and transition countries, so why include unreformed qualifications?

Plus, occupations and qualifications change so a secretary’s qualifications from the pre-personal computer era are out of date. The same for car mechanics as diagnostics are electronically-driven. So while qualifications are indeed a proxy for skills, their currency diminishes over time. This doesn’t hinder the holder’s career, though. Workers acquire other skills and knowledge in their working life and non-formally that outweigh their graduation qualification. The older you get, frankly, the more your qualification recedes in importance.

If a qualification is no longer awarded, especially if it has been superseded by an equivalent, up to date or more appropriate qualification, I don’t think it should be in the NQF because qualifications should be current.

At the Strasbourg meeting, Bulgaria presented its approach, which is to level non-outcomes qualifications via comparison with a new, similar outcomes-based qualification at the equivalent level. This issue is important across the Balkans and indeed poses challenges to implementation of the EQF. Not all countries agree with the idea of including older or non-outcomes qualifications. Criterion 3 of the EQF referencing criteria i.e. that setting requirements to link a country's NQF to the EQF, says that qualifications in NQFs should be based on outcomes. There is some controversy over, for example, Slovenia's levelling of its old pre-outcomes Master Znajost at level 8 – some feel this belongs at level 7. However, it remains difficult for the EQF Advisory Group to come to a collective view, given it can’t overrule an individual country.

There may be legal implications.  One scenario raised at the Strasbourg meeting was certificate-holders going to the European Court of Justice to protest against recognition decisions of second countries e.g. a refusal by a Member State to accept at a level 8 on the EQF a Master Znajost presented by a Slovene.  A compromise I’ve heard suggested could be recognition at level 8 in Slovenia for local or national use but level 7 in the EQF. That would be messy, though.

Ultimately, it depends what an NQF is for. If it’s for reform, legacy qualifications i.e. those not current, and superseded by others in the same field,  don’t belong there. I do not believe NQFs should be simply receptacles for any qualification, but instead those that meet quality requirements, including relevance. For non-outcomes qualifications, these can be entered in the NQF if they are later (or preferably, sooner) reformulated in outcomes terms.