How does ESCO benefit education providers, digital credentials providers and career guidance advisors?
Education providers, digital credentials providers (companies or educational institutions) and career counsellors can use ESCO:
Learning outcomes of qualifications are commonly defined in terms of knowledge, skills and competences, and therefore share the basic terminology that underpin ESCO. This shared terminology facilitates dialogue between the labour market and education and training stakeholders within and across sectors and borders.
By linking the learning outcomes of qualifications with ESCO knowledge, skills and competences, labour market and education actors will share a common language. In particular:
• employers will be able to understand the suitability of a candidate for a position on the basis of their qualifications;
• education systems will be able to get feedback on labour market needs, identify skills gaps and adapt their qualifications accordingly.
ESCO can support evidence-based curricula reforms through its use in skills intelligence. As ESCO’s terminology is focused on skills and competences, and updated on a continuous basis, education providers can use skills intelligence to learn about new trends in the labour market. They can then adapt their educational offer and tailor their training to meet employment needs.
ESCO facilitates the management of career transitions, based on the analysis of skills gaps, desired career paths, trends in the labour market and tailored suggestions for courses to fill in that skill gap.
Learning providers can use ESCO to describe the skills developed in any given informal and/or non-formal learning experience – online or offline - and award for example a digital credential (such as an Open Badge) in recognition of that particular achievement.
Use of ESCO in Open Badges
Open Badges can align to ESCO by linking to a standard terminology for the skills of learners, as an additional quality measure to support the recognition of informal and non-formal learning achievements.
Learning providers can use ESCO to describe the skills developed in any given learning experience – online or offline - and award an Open Badge in recognition of that particular achievement. The badges can then be curated and displayed in e-portofolios and eventually shared with employers and other third-parties as verifiable records of learning.
Thus:
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Open Badges can use ESCO to digitally describe skills, qualifications and learning achievements of individuals,
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ESCO can improve the interpretation of skills and qualifications across digital platforms – like job portals, Human Resources Management systems - leveraging the interoperability of open badges,
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ESCO can also support the transition from education to work, as a common European reference framework when describing skills, competences and qualifications in Open Badges and job advertisements,
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ESCO is increasingly being implemented in digital credentialing systems like Open badge factory,BadgeCraft, DigitalMe, as well as piloted in several Erasmus+ projects.
For more information on the status of the uptake of ESCO and Open Badges, see this presentation by the ESCO Maintenance Committee member, Simone Ravaioli.
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