Emerging Competency Based Frameworks
The CIS Summit Broadening Assessment & Skills Recognition working group is exploring alternative assessments for students as they leave secondary schools and apply to universities. Our focus is on student learning: how to evidence and apply what they have learned, and can do, as they approach higher education and work beyond secondary education.
Discussions with curriculum and assessment organizations highlight the value of identifying key skills and competencies as we consider those included in the design of a broader range of secondary school transcripts and portfolios. The following list of research-based competencies and frameworks are frequently used or cited in new and emerging assessment models.
- Carnegie Foundation – A New Vision for Skills-Based Assessment report lays the groundwork for reimagining educational assessment, reviewing and synthesizing major frameworks for competency-based education in K-12 and higher education systems, and articulating a taxonomy of skills essential for educational, occupational, and civic success.
- Mastery Transcript Consortium – Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC) is a nonprofit membership organization that helps make mastery learning—or competency-based education—available to all learners. Working with member schools, MTC has co-designed and built a software platform that members use to create scalable, flexible learning records, delivering them to universities and/or employers.
- McKinsey – Foundational Skills for Citizens: Using academic research and McKinsey’s experience in adult training, a set of 56 foundational skills have been identified that will benefit all citizens and showed that higher proficiency in them is already associated with a higher likelihood of employment, higher incomes, and job satisfaction.
- Melbourne Metrics – Melbourne Metrics, developed by a team of academics, educators, policy experts and technology specialists at the University of Melbourne, provides next-generation research-based transformative assessment tools, credentials and services, empowering systems and schools to assess and credential the complex competencies learners need for life.
- OECD – Future of Education and Skills 2030 aims to build a common understanding of the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values students need in the 21st century. As part of this project, the OECD Learning Compass has been created to represent the types of competencies deemed important for students to thrive in the future.
- World Economic Forum – The World Economic Forum’s bi-annual Future of Jobs Report, based on a survey-based data set covering a cross-section of the world’s largest employers, highlights core skills sought by employers, business expectations for evolution of skills, and reskilling and upskilling priorities.
- UNESCO International Board of Education (IBE) – Future competences and the future of curriculum: A global normative guide for competence-based curricula that can support the attainment of the UNESCO Education 2030 Agenda.
The New Metrics International Schools Program
There is a growing sense of purpose among the CIS community of schools and universities to utilise new metrics of students’ competencies to evidence who they are as learners and show external stakeholders what they can do. To pursue this objective, we have announced a program for CIS member schools focused on student assessment in partnership with Melbourne Metrics (at the University of Melbourne in Australia).
The New Metrics International Schools Program will develop a complementary assessment record that will help to predict a student’s agency to enter university life, undertake new studies, and succeed. Participating schools will be supplied with assessment and reporting tools and methods that align with a school’s learning ambitions.
This opportunity is open to CIS member schools. More information is available in the CIS Community portal.