RECOGNITION OF NON-FORMAL AND INFORMAL ... - Solidar

RECOGNITION OF NON-FORMAL AND INFORMAL
COMPETENCES OF WORKERS’ REPRESENTATIVES
NON-FORMALLY AND INFORMALLY ACQUIRED
COMPETENCES IN THE WORKING ENVIRONMENT
PART III
3 /
“I AM CAPABLE OF MORE THAN
MY CERTIFICATES INDICATE”
¬ Other than knowledge, competences cannot be tested theoretically;
they only become visible during practical application.
This means that we can only access competences if the person
concerned describes them based on experiences and we are able
to document this. The goal is to document the outcomes so that
the process can be repeated and will be generally accepted.
Our aim was not to achieve recognition as in a European credits
system or classifi cation in the formal system (10 per cent of the
academic educational objectives completed) which would result
in integration into a level of school or university training or another
kind of formal further training which the person should then
complete.
The political debate should give informal competences the
same weight as formal competences. This objective is diffi cult
to achieve, especially as it is contrary to the interests of education
policy makers – European policy makers in particular. They
still place the greatest emphasis on the integration of formal
competences into the levels of school and university education,
whether it is based on the credit system ECVET or the European
Qualifi cations Framework, or whether the aim simply is to secure
one’s own signifi cance within the formal system.
We wanted to attain that goal for
all workers, whether they are German
workers employed in jobs totally
different to those they originally trained
for, university dropouts or migrants whose
qualifi cations (even formal qualifi cations
acquired in their home countries) were
not recognised at all for a long time.
Also, given the extension of working life and the phenomenon of
active retirement, the importance of informal competences and
practical knowledge becomes increasingly obvious. The future
prospects of members of works councils (the elected body
representing the interests of a company’s staff) are, regardless
of the reasons, rather limited, even more so when the person
was a fulltime works council member. Regarding our method for
safeguarding those informal competences, we asked ourselves:
What job prospects do people have after the end of their fi veyear
offi ce term?
In our scenario, the imaginary works council members cannot
or do not want to return to their original job. During their offi
ce term, in their unions, parties, private lives and families, the
works council members informally and non-formally acquired
competences that mean they are now much more suitable to
a completely different job. They possess knowledge that can
compete with the knowledge an expert might have acquired
formally through studies. They have changed their social status,
comparing themselves to other colleagues and striving to attain
a different social status. Alternatively, they are forced to leave
the company because they have fallen out of favour and have to
seek a new direction in their lives.
Competence evaluation aims to:
1. Identify skills acquired informally and non-formally before
the person became a works council member.
2. Identify, with our assistance competences/advantages/
strengths acquired during the offi ce term as a works
council member.
3. Recording and documenting them.
4. ‘Translating’ them in order to align them to a notional
fi eld of work, e. g. HRM, disability management, labour
lawyer etc., and make them comparable.
Photo credits: © Diego Cervo / 123rf.com
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