The Estonian Qualifications Authority (Kutsekoda) recently completed a major update of the national skills classification as part of the development of the Estonian Skills Registry and the Skills Compass tool. The Skills Registry provides Estonia with a structured national taxonomy of skills, while the Skills Compass offers a public digital platform where users can explore skills, occupations and fields of work.

As part of the redesign of the Skills Registry, Estonia reshaped how skills are described, introduced a four-level hierarchy to organise them and used a diverse range of national sources to ensure the content reflects labour-market reality. Throughout this process, ESCO played an important role as a reference point, helping Estonia check the consistency of their taxonomy, avoid duplication across different domains and align national language with ESCO terminology. Therefore, the renewed Estonian skills classification system is based on ESCO, but adapted to Estonia’s specific needs, incorporating up-to-date, culturally relevant and country-specific information.

Alongside the update of the national classification, Estonia also completed a mapping exercise linking skills from the national registry to their closest ESCO equivalents, as required under the EURES regulation. These ESCO links are now also visible in the Skills Compass platform, where users exploring a skill can open the corresponding ESCO match. These connections are giving learners, jobseekers, employers and other users clearer insight into how national skills relate to ESCO.

For more information, read the article published by the Estonian Qualifications Authority.