Policy Brief: Qualifications and Lifelong Learning

Learning one set of skills at school, technical college or university is no longer enough to carry people throughout their working life. But there is one basic skill that is becoming increasingly important in today’s fast-changing technological universe: being able to learn and adapt to the new skills and training that will be required. But learning to learn is not enough; people also need to be sure that they acquire new skills during their careers as efficiently as possible – and that means ensuring that qualifications systems give them credit for the experience and knowledge they have gained, whether in the classroom, in the workplace or elsewhere.

It is costly and demotivating to insist that someone who has been performing a task for six months spend three weeks in a classroom being formally taught how to do it. Or to spend money sending people away to learn a skill that a more experienced colleague could teach them in half a day on-site – but then you have to find a way to judge whether the worker has perfected the skill, and thus merited the reward for being able to perform a new task.

Countries have been trying for some time to reform their qualifications systems to make lifelong learning possible. Most policy makers believe that there is a link between qualification systems and lifelong learning, but it has not been clear up to now what kind of link and how it works.

This Policy Brief looks at how national qualifications systems can be used to promote lifelong learning in terms of quantity, quality, efficiency and equitable distribution of learning opportunities. ■