African insights: competency-based training - limits and opportunities in informal labour markets

Introduction: what is competency-based training and why is it seen as attractive for Sub-Saharan African TVET provision?

The notion of competence is central to education that is focused on preparation for work, including vocational and professional education. However, competency-based training (CBT) as an approach to reforming vocational education is something more specific.

It starts with an attempt to isolate and define the competencies required in different work occupations and sectors. According to proponents of CBT, this requires employers analyzing the component tasks of different occupations, and the competencies required to perform those tasks. The idea is that the descriptions of competency in competency-statements or occupational standards can be used as the basis to develop curricula and assess learner performance. By delivering educational provision in line with what employers define as the competencies required for an occupation, and assessing against competence standards, the assumption is that learners can display their applied knowledge: what they can do, not just what they know.

Defined competence-standards or occupational standards are also seen as a vehicle for quality assurance and funding, as in some VET systems training providers are paid according to their course delivery and their learners’ achievement of either individual competencies, or for qualifications that are comprised of competencies. Originating in the United Kingdom, with extensive use soon after in Australia, many policy-makers around the world have attempted to reform their TVET systems to align with employer defined competencies in the hope that it will improve responsiveness of TVET curricula, as well as ensure appropriate standards of assessment, and to fund more demand-driven provision (Wolf, 1995; Guthrie, 2009).

This has appeal in African countries where, as is the case in many countries, TVET systems are criticized for not producing the occupational skills in demand by employers.

Additionally, because the competency-statements are supposed to provide clear benchmarks for assessment, another aspiration for competency-based training is that the competency statements can be utilized to certify the work-readiness of people in an occupation in which they may have been informally trained or have already been working in. This has appeal in African countries where informal training and informal apprenticeships have been widespread, and in many cases, people working in an occupation do not have the required formal certification to show their competency to perform the requirements of that occupation. The hope is that competency-based learning provides an opportunity to have skills assessed and certified after already working in the labour market in a skilled trade or occupation.

The multiple appeals of competency-based training lies in the belief that if employers say what it is that they want a worker to be able to do, providers and policy-makers can design education programmes that enable them to do it and/or can design certification methods which assess that competency (however attained). A focus on competency-based training is therefore expected to have multiple impacts:

1. New entrants to a training programme are trained using curricula which focus on their competency as defined by employer skills needs captured in occupational standards.
2. Governments and employers can fund training programmes leading to competencies that are identified as important, making provision responsive.
3. Informally trained people can have their existing competence assessed without participating in a formal training programme.

In practice, however, competency-based training has proven complex to implement well. There is little clear evidence of success, and many studies show difficulties with implementation in different contexts. A recent evaluation in Africa found that while there is enthusiastic adoption, there is, as yet, limited progress in implementation, and even less evidence of desired impacts (UNESCO, IIEP and IFEF, 2020).

There is also a large body of educational research arguing that it is conceptually flawed. Researchers argue that competency-based curricula undermine the complexity of curriculum development, and the ways in which knowledge and skills should be acquired to prepare people for work (Wolf, 1995; Young, 2008; Wheelahan, 2010; Allais, 2014; Winch, 2021). A curriculum which looks like lists of competency-based tasks appears fragmented and loses the overall knowledge required to perform in the world of work. Employers think about the tasks and processes of work, and the skills needed for these, but not about knowledge building: the knowledge which underpins those skills. The work that people do every day in any workplace (i.e. practice) requires situated (often tacit) knowledge, which is accumulated through the reflexive process generated through practice (Schön, 1983). Knowledge and practice are mutually reinforcing (Winch, 2010). One of the main goals in preparing people for work is to give them the formal and practical education that will socialize them into making decisions, professing opinions and judgments, overseeing their own work in ways that could be justified by reference to a chain of reasoning that goes beyond a specific context.

The BILT Africa Scoping Survey provides some insight into specific challenges in the African context in introducing CBT. While the study was not specifically focused on competency-based training, other than asking participants about the use of occupational standards in the survey component of the study, researchers did not ask about it directly. It was striking, however, how much it emerged in interviews with actors in TVET systems. The extent to which it was raised in interviews, and the points made, provide some insights into the challenges of implementing this reform in African TVET systems, as well as what it is being introduced to achieve. A surprising finding was that competency-based standards and occupational standards were also seen as the main mechanism for skills anticipation.

The use of CBT in skills anticipation in African TVET systems

As would be expected, the study found that occupational standards and competency-based qualifications are seen by many TVET actors as key to curriculum design. The study confirmed a strong emphasis on creating cooperation mechanisms between TVET providers and employers in defining the competencies within qualifications, which policy-makers saw as necessary to ensure that they reflected current employer demands. They also indicated such cooperation mechanisms as being key to anticipating future skills needs. Employer engagement in qualification design was discussed by interviewees as both part of the process of integrating required skills into qualifications and curricula and to address skills gaps. Respondents reflected that this would make TVET curricula more relevant. For example, an interviewee from a government institution in Kenya argued that the shift from ‘knowledge based’ to ‘competency based’ curricula would address skill mismatches, and attributed such mismatches to a lack of practical knowledge:

Developing competency-based qualifications is seen as the basis for both identifying current and emerging skills needs and integrating them into qualifications. Of those surveyed (n=223), most respondents indicated that the primary use of occupational standards is for curriculum development whereas the second most popular answer was ‘to understand what graduates must be able to do in the workplace’.