11 June 2003

One of the great disadvantages of coming from outside the English education and training system is not fully appreciating when - as they say in my country - you're about to open up a can of worms.

But one of the strengths of an outsider is possessing the naivety of the truly innocent. And from that perspective, I make my comments this morning.

Qualifications and the labour market: do qualifications help or hinder?

Let me begin by noting that across the advanced economies of the western world, governments, employers and unions have embraced education and training as a powerful mechanism for addressing problems as diverse as global competitiveness, high unemployment, skills shortages and poverty.

Amongst other measures, governments of both the left and the right have turned to the greater use of qualifications as instruments of policy. National qualifications frameworks have been erected as templates for the knowledge economy. Qualifications authorities, such as the QCA, have been set up to establish standards and ensure their maintenance.

These national templates for the knowledge economy, or national qualifications frameworks, set out a hierarchy of qualifications which embrace successive levels of knowledge, skill and understanding.

The levels are progressive and sequential - they move upwards from base levels of achievement to successively higher levels for which the lower levels are a prerequisite.

The national frameworks typically, but not necessarily, embrace qualifications associated with education and training from age 14 or age 16. At their upper level, there is no age boundary; they embrace learning on the job, and lifelong learning into retirement.

Typically also, these frameworks are divided into two or more columns, which define a boundary between academic and vocational education, or between variants of both.

These boundaries vary in permeability from country to country - in some they are crossed easily, in others the divide is rigid.

Now none of these national qualifications frameworks has been handed down from on high on tablets of stone. All have evolved imperfectly over long periods of time; and all remain in the process of evolution, subject to transformation and change.

In the middle of the twentieth century, the disciplines of architecture and engineering gave us the mantra "form follows function; structure follows strategy".

This reflected a movement to design and construct buildings around the key function they were to perform, or - in other words - the strategy they were to deliver; their shape, their form, their appearance, their structure was a consequence of that strategy. And I guess in my own home town, the Sydney Opera House is the perfect example.

The same applies to any national qualifications framework, and should be applied as a test for its relevance for present and future purposes.

The structure of the framework - its arrangements of levels and columns, must be designed entirely in terms of its capacity to deliver a function, a strategy.

And the function of all national qualifications frameworks across the western world - all templates for developing a knowledge economy - is to produce a highly skilled and knowledgeable community, a wealthy and sustainable nation, and an economy which is vigorous and internationally competitive, while at the same time addressing issues such as poverty and unemployment.

Now the national qualifications framework for England must be judged not by how it looks against other national qualifications frameworks, but by whether it has the capacity to do for England what needs to be done in the field of education and training, to produce and maintain all those attributes of a vibrant nation and national economy.

Well, is the English national qualifications framework the Sydney Opera House that this country needs?

Does it help or hinder responsiveness to the labour market?

Will it deliver the skills, expressed as qualifications needed to meet the projected shortfall of one million jobs which Chris Humphries alerts us to?

The answer to that lies in how it is used, and treated.

Now, we regulators have a responsibility to ensure that standards are maintained.

But while that is a necessary condition of our role, it is not a sufficient one.

"Guarding standards", which has been the QCA strapline, is an essentially conservative and restricted view of our role. In itself, and alone, it does nothing to help meet skills strategies in the labour market.

Our task is to employ the National Qualifications Framework as a strategic and agile instrument of policy for workforce development - to create and build human capital.

And we start from the premise that the key attribute of a qualification is not:

• that it signals information about the skill and knowledge of the holder (which it does)
  or that it is a "brand", which recruiters and holders know can be trusted (as it does)
• The key attribute of a qualification - the prime function for which a qualification qualifies you - is further learning.

Meeting the needs of the labour market in a knowledge economy is dependent upon having a workforce which knows how to learn and has the skills to learn, throughout a working career.

Qualifications, and a National Qualifications Framework, developed on that basis, will help to meet the demands of the labour market; those which are not, will hinder it.

What are we doing at the QCA to achieve this?

We recognise, firstly, that policy renewal in the area of skills formation depends upon preconceiving clients in a fresh way - as networks, systems and supply chains in regions, rather than simply as "workers" and "industry".

It seems to me that the UK is much further down the track in establishing a potential to develop and manage sustainable skills ecosystems (as they are called in the literature) than many other countries in the developed world, and that the QCA has a critical role to play in enabling other agencies such as the LCS and the SSCs and the SSDA to fulfill their mainstream roles.

Skills ecosystems are defined as clusters of high, intermediate or low level competencies in a particular region or industry, shaped by interlocking networks of companies, markets and institutions.

It is the high skill ecosystems which have received most attention: the cluster of biomedical and hardware/software firms in California; Germany's state-sponsored research/technology transfers; Italy's family and community networks of small enterprises; the hub-spoke shaped corporations of Japan.

The Learning and Skills Council, through its local offices, has enormous potential to build sustainable skills ecosystems at regional level throughout the nation - promoting the growth of skills and competencies required to support and extend productive relationships between companies, markets and institutions locally.

The LSC has established a geographical or spatial network nationally for the development of skills ecosystems, by driving demand, using LSC funding to support employer engagement and the provision of training and assessment.

Intersecting with this, in the form of a matrix, is the emerging occupation-specific and employer-led Sector Skills Councils, and the Sector Skills Development Agency.

These are responsible for the development of occupational standards and training requirements by occupation and for setting targets for training and skills in their sectors.

Now, the work of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority lies at the points on this matrix where the horizontal lines represented by the regional Learning and Skills Councils intersect with the vertical lines represented by the Sector Skills Councils.

Our job, at those points, is to provide for the accreditation of occupationally-developed curriculum into timely and new qualifications in the National Qualifications Framework.

We have a unique and critical role to play in the building of sustainable skills ecosystems across the country, and in working with DfES, the Learning and Skills Council, the Sector Skills Councils, the Sector Skills Development Agency, the Adult Learning Inspectorate, the awarding bodies and their federation, schools, further education colleges, private providers, business and industry, unions and local government to perform our essential core business in this area - which is responding to the development of new curriculum, and packaging it into new qualifications within a dynamic and responsive National Qualifications Framework, and thus playing our part in the building of the human capital of this nation.

It seems to me that the QCA has not gone hunting for this in the past. It must. It must be out there creating and seizing opportunities. On this matter, it need not wait for remits from ministers. We have an enduring remit under legislation, which is about driving forward with the shaping of relevant curriculum into timely qualifications to develop the human and social capital of this country.

So what are we doing about it - apart from internal structural and organisational changes.

Well, we are simplifying the National Qualifications Framework criteria.

In particular, we are taking on the nonsensical distinction between academic and vocational education.

Parity of esteem is the most unproductive and unnecessary term used in education today.

Value and esteem lie not in structures or labels associated with qualifications, but in the extent to which the qualifications meet the needs of the users - learners, their teachers, employers and higher education.

All subjects have a curriculum base. Some - which are currently called academic or general - have their curriculum roots in university education, and those which we currently call vocational subjects derive their curriculum from industry.

In those subjects which derive their curriculum from universities performance is best assessed against specialist standards on the basis of written examinations.

In those subjects which derive their curriculum from industry, performance is best assessed against specialised standards by the quality of the product or the performance.

Clearly, an A* in history will look different from an A* in cabinet making, and each will call for quite different knowledge, skill and understanding.

But in each case, say at A-level, the standards should be set at the level of what might be expected of an intelligent, creative, technically competent and hard working 17 to 18 year old, and assessed using a method which is fit for purpose.

Over the last twelve months we have reduced the time taken to accredit qualifications considerably. The average time taken to accredit NVQs was eight weeks in 2002 compared with 22 weeks over the previous three years. Vocationally-related qualifications, which are more diverse and typically take longer, took on average 20 weeks to accredit in 2002 compared with 48 weeks over the previous three years.

These very significant reductions have come about because of greater familiarity among awarding bodies, with what was needed; improved communications and a number of initiatives that QCA has taken.

Further, we propose to build a system of regulations that secures the provision of high quality qualifications by competent awarding bodies with a minimum of regulation by the regulatory authorities.

We propose to help meet the requirements of the labour market by focusing on quality assurance of the development and delivery processes, rather than on the product.

We will licence approved awarding bodies to accredit qualifications, and audit their performance.

And finally, you will be aware that Ivan Lewis has given the QCA, the LSC and the SSDA a joint remit, in consultation with the other regulatory authorities and UfI, to advise on a new framework for vocational qualifications.

The recommendations we have made to him are based on five themes:

• wide use of internationally benchmarked national qualificational standards agreed by employers, with vocational qualifications which draw together the learning and assessment to confirm those standards;
• development of a unit-based credit system capable of recognising diverse achievements and supporting the flexibility needed to promote lifelong learning;
• streamlined regulatory arrangements which put greater emphasis on the performance of awarding bodies rather than on detailed specifications;
• funding arrangements that support learning through the pursuit and achievement of part and whole qualifications;
• clear and compelling messages to learners and employers about the benefits of vocational qualifications.

We have recommended to the Minister that these changes be carried out in three developmental stages:

• 2003-4 : Action should be taken to improve the specifications for national occupational standards and qualifications, informed by industry-led curricula. Such curricula will be based on internationally-benchmarked occupational standards, leading to vocational qualifications that draw together the learning and assessment needed to confirm these standards. These improvements will be supported by streamlining the development processes that recognise and respond to the qualifications needs of employers.
• 2004-6 : National occupational standards will be implemented to support industry-led curricula. The regulation of qualifications will focus increasingly on the performance of awarding bodies. And unit-based credit frameworks of qualifications will be under development throughout the UK, with funding systems designed to meet country-specific needs.
• By 2007 - recognising that it may take longer to implement in full - we will have industry-led curricula and associated credit-rated qualifications responsive to the changing needs of individuals and employers, available to and communicated across all sectors. By 2010, implementation will be complete.
  So, qualifications and the labour market: do they help or hinder?

My conclusion is that the labour market can only be helped by qualifications which:

• Signify that the holder is, above all else, a competent and active learner
• Meet contemporary and emerging demand
• Are of a standard which meets international landmarks
• Are embedded within a framework which is dynamic, responsive, agile and used strategically as an instrument of policy.

When these conditions are not met, the qualifications and the overall qualifications framework will at best be irrelevant, and at worst a debilitating influence in terms of both the labour market and the national economy.

At the QCA, our light on the hill is the former, and it is there that we intend to go.

Ken Boston