7 challenges to validating non-formal and informal learning in Europe

The 2012 Council Recommendation calls for Member States to put in place, by no later than 2018, arrangements to enable individuals to have their knowledge, skills and competences acquired via non-formal and informal learning validated, and to be able to obtain ’a full qualification, or, where applicable, part qualification on the basis of validated non-formal and informal learning experiences’. This is certainly a laudable and ambitious aim, and there are those who feel that the drive to formalise all types of learning may well lead to a narrower conception of learning. More...