7 BASIC COMPETENCY FRAMEWORKS FOR SCHOOLS

1. Core subject competency
2. Technical competency
3. Creative competency
4. Problem solving competency
5. Critical thinking competency
6. People competency
7. Communication competency

Why are these competencies important?

Each competency serves as a part of a jig-saw puzzle.  It does not make a complete picture without solving each and every part.  Any individual is complete only when exposed to all competencies.  Schooling is the best way to promote competencies.  Though the extent of developing of these competencies depends on likes and dislikes, interest in the subject, curiosity in the work provided and passion of the individual.

 21^st century is about different abilities in an individual.  Today, world has become more complicated with ‘routine manual’ jobs being replaced by mechanised robots.  Focus of learning should shift from learning to applying-analysing and relearning.  To develop and expertise students on such a higher-level thinking can be done only through competency-based education. 

How does this look in the global scale?

Focus of schooling is now to develop competencies.  OECD’s Global competency framework focuses on four major attributes.  They are

Source: http://www.oecd.org/education/2030/

The focus of OECD is on larger areas while schooling looks into more finer areas of development like

• Disciplinary knowledge is the base knowledge provided by text books
• Interdisciplinary knowledge for creative thinking and problem solving
• Practical knowledge for critical thinking and technical knowledge
• Cognitive and meta-cognitive skills to develop both creative and critical thinking
• Social and emotional skills to develop Communication and people thinking for a sustainable world.
• Physical and practical skills is the application of practical knowledge towards sustainable development.
• Attitudes and values which include people awareness and communication that are to be built from personal to local then to national and extended to global level

It is an established fact that the focus of schools should be on applying and analysing the read knowledge.  However, in order to design such classes, the focus should clearly lie on the competencies and the mode of approach should be based on the competencies so that outcome-based delivery takes upper hand.

The larger focus of developing such competencies to build communities on strong foundations of health, mutual respect, and self-sustaining.

How can schools develop these competencies?

The interlinking of competencies with the core curriculum is the central idea.  To do so teachers need to build upon curricular experiences rather than curriculum delivery.  Any topic for the learner needs to be encased into capsules which provides the learning a real-life experience. 

Terms like – Involving, engaging, Inquiry, Projects etc., provide a lot of, out of the scope, norms into classrooms.  Such methods allow students to talk, collaborate, interact, understand and analyse experiences.  Such live experiences develop competencies among the learners.  Looking beyond the textbooks and solving daily problems help build a better global citizen.  The crux is to understand that learner needs are different from what they were.  However, the only hitch to the issue is that – Can our teachers' cope up with the change?