Summary

The survey and stakeholder consultation process yielded valuable insights into the status, needs, challenges, and perspectives surrounding qualifications and credentials databases (QCDs) across surveyed countries.

The status of QCDs varies across countries, with a few countries possessing fully operational databases, while others are in development or consultation phases. Operational databases range in maturity and coverage, from comprehensive ones spanning multiple sectors to those focusing on specific education and training areas. This disparity underscores the need for tailored strategies to address each country's unique challenges in database development and maintenance.

The survey identified various institutions responsible for QCD operation and development, such as qualifications agencies, ministries of education, and accreditation bodies. However, there's inconsistency in institutional involvement across countries, indicating potential issues in role clarity among stakeholders. Establishing clear governance structures and coordination mechanisms, as well as building capacity are crucial steps for effective database management and sustainability.

QCDs primarily focus on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), with varying coverage levels for general and higher education. The number of qualifications in databases differs significantly among countries, reflecting disparities in database maturity, data collection methods, and institutional capacities.

Stakeholders emphasise the importance of understanding user needs to maximise the utility and impact of the qualifications and credentials platform (QCP). They highlight the need for a core feature enabling comparison of qualifications and credentials across countries, facilitating co-development, harmonisation, and informed policy decisions. Stakeholders advocate for comprehensive databases covering all education sectors, particularly TVET and higher education, to capture the diversity of valued credentials. Key challenges include technological limitations, resource constraints, and lack of harmonisation between educational systems, emphasising the need for proactive measures to enhance database value and sustainability, combined with providing capacity development opportunities for various stakeholder groups and users, particularly administrators.

Based on the stakeholder analysis and the current status of national Qualifications and Credentials Databases, creating a QCP should have at its core to be a transparency instrument that supports national frameworks, while simultaneously allowing for cooperation. This would in effect enhance the quality and general policies around qualifications and credentials, it would facilitate educational and labour mobility through the portability of qualifications and credentials and lastly should support a more modular and lifelong process of education and training.

The analysis recommends that among the main features of any architecture should be:

• the easy registration and management of qualifications,
• search, comparison and visualisation features for qualifications,
• provision of credible and reliable (authoritative) data on qualifications and credentials to facilitate recognition procedure,
• accessibility for a wide range of user types,
• comprehensiveness, through covering the range of desired qualifications and education and training sectors,
• clarity, with regards to governance and the various roles and tasks for operating the QCP on the national and continental levels,
• efficiency in terms of operation, in order to ensure long-term sustainability,
• scalability, to accommodate currently existing qualifications databases of various sizes, as well as expected future use.

These core-features should be detailed in a technical manner based on this analysis report, transforming the user-needs and requirements and the current status quo, needs and expectations into concrete use-cases as a basis of an architectural design for the QCP.