Within the Assess Plus project, content development is ongoing across all partners. As INQS is developing content for O1 – around national skills accreditation in Ireland, we thought that we would share some of the developed content which is aimed at supporting skills accreditation practitioners:

There is not, at time of writing, a binding nor nationally-applicable framework related to skills audits, nor to the notion of audits as a general concept within Irish education or industry. While some historic and ongoing Nationally-funded or led activities in this area are or have been conducted, and while there are a number of papers and reports which attempt to provide an overview of the requirements, it should be noted that these are not agreed nor instituted at a national level and these reports and projects do not address any form of legal framework or national support or guidance. Nonetheless, some examples of such reports include:

• National Skill’s Strategy 2025: Ireland’s Future: A short overview of efforts to promote skills audits within and across national policy is presented within this report, where it is noted that a key objective of the National Skill’s Strategy (NSS) is to encourage people across Ireland to engage more in lifelong learning, elements of which include the use of skills audits to provide pathways to continued education and accreditation. It is further noted in the report that greater recognition of workplace learning (including in company training, on-the-job training and non-formal activities such as team work) are desirable, further supporting the role of skills audits
• The Further Education and Training Strategy: 2014-2019: The Further Education and Training (FET) Strategy aims to deliver “a higher quality learning experience leading to better outcomes for all those who engage in FET”. As part of this report, a roadmap and implementation plan is presented to attempt to provide a means of ensuring an effective and comprehensive Irish FET system to meet the needs of stakeholders engaging with or in GET – leading to improved social inclusion, economic development, etc. Elements related to skills audits are outlined, but not fully addressed as part of this report.

For more on the Assess Plus project, please see http://www.assess-plus.eu