The main focus of the CH-Q initiative is to enable individuals to manage their own careers, articulate their own development needs and build up their own competencies. Education and vocational training should respond to this, becoming more flexible and demand-driven. Formal systems such as qualification structures and vocational education will then have less of a prescriptive function in terms of personal development, and serve more as a reference framework and repertoire within which there is individual choice. These formal systems retain a function as pegs for defining the direction and level of personal development and the relevant external communication with employers, mediators, referrers, schools, etc.

Individual responsibility

The concept of lifelong learning embraces a high degree of individual responsibility. The individual is not on his own, however; relevant stakeholders will have to be assigned to assist individuals in developing competencies and managing their careers. Stakeholders not only include organisations, whose task it is to prepare people for long-term participation in the labour market and in society, such as vocational and other educational institutions, but also organisations who assist individuals at crucial junctures in their careers to find new perspectives.

Transitions

The transitions from school to work, from the period between looking for work and finding it, from sick leave to returning to work, from one job to another, or from work to retirement are cases in point. If lifelong learning is the motto, then personal development and career management will always be a focus of attention, not so much in the sense of repairing breaks in personal resumes, but woven into the normal learning and working setting. Increasingly, this interdependence takes shape in personal development plans (PDPs), in which employees and students are required to articulate their personal learning goals. Methods and tools for identifying, evaluating and recognising non-formal and informal learning can also be helpful. Providing guidance and counselling to individuals is a priority in encouring them to become proactive, take on responsibility and deal with what is required and expected of them.

Accreditation of prior learning (APL)

Personal wishes and status quo are not the only normative criteria, however – these aspects have to be related to social and economic contexts. This calls for a set of policy tools which can help individuals on their way to self-management on the one hand, and which links competencies to external norms on the other. Accreditation of prior learning (APL) is one such tool. APL supports the construction of work profiles that allow individual’s to understand and compare with their own capacities and competencies, motives and ambitions. As a System geared both towards selfmanagement and towards stressing the distinctive features of competencies, the CH-Q system has the same objective – its added value lies mainly in the assurance of quality.