While we bring an increasing range of frameworks and technologies to measuring what people can do, we increasingly lose sight of the capabilities we are trying to grow in them, and our systems haven’t noticed. I have spent a large proportion of my working life developing measurement tools and evaluating reform initiatives in different aspects of the education system. The question I’m typically asked to assess is whether the project met its objectives – was there improvement i

Three posts this week have approached the same underlying question from different angles. The first looked at universities making bold public commitments to graduate AI-fluent professionals and asked who is actually verifying those claims. The second looked at organisations investing heavily in AI training, measuring completion rates, and calling it competency assessment and asked whether a HR platform tracking module completion has anything meaningful to say about profession

Accreditors are deciding which programmes meet the standard. Employers are deciding which candidates are genuinely ready. And individuals ­­­­­­– millions of them ­­– are considering career decisions and self-education trying to guess what is going to make them and keep them employable. Everyone in this chain is trying to make an informed decision. Who has the information they actually need to make it well? Because the question underneath all of it, the one that keeps getting

The ILO's recent report on lifelong learning runs to 236 pages. It covers the evolution of the concept since the 1990s, the policy challenges governments face in building more flexible education systems, and the growing pressure on workers and employers alike to keep pace with an accelerating economy. It is a serious, thorough piece of work. Lifelong learning has a blind spot In those 236 pages, the phrase "Recognition of Prior Learning" appears nine times. That number reflec

Think about the day you qualified. How capable did you actually feel? How much did you really know? Were you confident? Or were you like me, a little terrified, when you walked out with that designation in your hand? And how much of what makes you genuinely valuable today did you learn in the years that followed? The clients you couldn't have handled then. The decisions you now make without thinking. The judgement that only comes from being tested, failing quietly, and findin

The FT ran a sharp analysis this week on what's happening to software engineers under agentic AI. Job vacancies are up. But only for seniors. Entry-level roles remain flat and the pay gap between top and bottom appears to be widening. The conclusion many people are drawing is that the future will belong to those who can delegate and direct, not those who can code. The ability to critique and critically review over technical depth. I understand the conclusion but I think it i

If competence is a spectrum, why do we work with systems that still treat it like a checkbox? Migration assessment bodies know this challenge better than most. This article extends on Dr. Peter Beven (FAITD) thoughts on “The university skilling challenge” and unpacks how we can build fair, consistent recognition systems that reflect reality. Professional competence isn’t a checkbox. It’s a Spectrum. Why the competence gap is widening – and what it means for migration assessme