'Your experience is as good as a qualification' is displayed on the APMA (National Agency for Adult Training) promotional leaflet. How far is this assertion socially credible?  How should we approach and understand the developments of the current VAE (validation of prior learning) provisions in France ? The length of experience required reduced to one year, the possibility of training in parallel with the VAE before going before the panel, etc…

These recent provisions support the idea of a change of logic, present in France but also throughout Europe: in this, we would be moving from the logic of a training offer to the logic of an offer of courses, in which certification would be a waymarker rather than an end.

From this perspective, a priori the VAE appears to be a major asset in terms of the easing of the route and the hybridisation of the plans. But how should we analyse and consider this passage from the logic of a training offer to a logic of support of professional and personal pathways?
  What forms should we envisage for the VAE to take in this process?

In this perspective, three issues appear to be fundamental, which affect both the expectations from which the plans are developed, and the reconfiguration of the training stakeholders' professionalisation.

1 Better understanding, to make better allowances for workplace training in the development and implementation of training plans, seems to be an essential.

Because if it is indeed carrying out the work which develops skills, then it would be better to base the plan around the employee's actual activities, rather than the tasks prescribed, to devise support plans which are suited to their career paths and their organisational development. The renewed interest which we are currently seeing in workplace learning (FEST) seems to head in this direction. From the experience of VAE and from that gained by VAE supporters, many lessons can be drawn on which elements of engineering to support career paths can be based.

         2 Planning the conditions of workplace development in and throughout the professional career. 

Experiments, whether conducted here or there; collective reflexive activities in work situations and/or in training; new forms of management (today we speak of free enterprise): these have all clearly shown how much 'acting with skills' as well as 'acting autonomously' are behaviours which depend largely on the environments in which they are deployed.

In training and/or support areas, professionals have to face the real challenge of reconciling two objectives which, without necessarily being contradictory, will not however work without each other:

• a goal of adaptation: ensuring the development of the knowledge necessary to exercise the skills expected in the professional world.
• and at the same time, a development objective: equipping trainees, (or those who have been trained, or VAE candidates) so that they can be the designers of their career paths, and more generally of their choice of professional and personal career. This ability to choose their acquired knowledge involves certain conditions: access to knowledge, access to resources, and the chance to own and share them. These are the keys to the joint development of both the person and the work. It is certainly not a coincidence that in their access to sustainable employment, those with VAE qualifications, obtained by a process of analysing their own activities, is 10% greater than those qualified by training.[1]

         3 The ability to view the social signals of recognisable qualifications on the jobs market (national and/or international) is essential, to be able to progress in an environment consisting of multiple professional, sectoral, geographical and other mobilities.

The issue here is that of framing the terms of reference for skills in the common national and/or European contexts so as to allow the greatest number to access a credible and actually 'bankable' qualification. In this regard, the provisions of the Validation of Acquired Experience (in France and Luxembourg) have shown the way: enabling the recognition of acquired knowledge via qualifications or degrees which guarantee equal 'dignity' to the methods of access to these qualifications, throughout the career path.

Ensuring this passage toward more hybrid and more flexible provisions, which are closer to the needs of individuals and businesses; yes, but how? Therein lies the essential question: devising and developing the engineering of pathways which take account of these three issues.

Support in VAE may be defined as a process aimed at collaborative self-training, which will not work without mediation involving others. And these mediations are multiple: they include mediation of the word covering the activity, of writing, towards the supporter, towards peers, the panel and even relatives, etc …

Because the support time forms part of the training: this is the time where the candidate recalls, develops, gives meaning to his experiences, and on this basis formalises his knowledge. These two specific moments, which on the one hand are where he recounts his experience to others, and on the other the stage where he lays out his new knowledge in a file, or facing a panel, have one common feature: the words. The verbal expression of his experience is the very essence of this time of support: it is the candidate's required activity. This is the activity which allows him to create his file and present it, to justify his actions, in an actual situation or in an interview.

To be productive (leading to a product: the file, the explanations given during a simulation) and constructive (open to the development of the person's acquired knowledge), this verbalising activity implies two things:

• on the one hand, there should be an audience; that is to say, a designated third party which can be one or several people;
• on the other hand, it should depend on a report on the successive formulations;
   
• and finally, it should be based on interactions with other people capable of supporting the commitment of the person undertaking that same activity.

Here we must accept that in a career path, training time is particularly important, since it allows for the development and formalisation of the newly-acquired knowledge, indicates the track and proofs of the route taken, and forms the basis on which the person's new professional prospects can be supported; in other words, it projects the continuation of the career path …

In this transaction, the professional identity of the person is forged, and from here on we measure the need to adapt the training course as a progressive support of this changing identity.

The evolutions of the market and of the organisation of work lead to a more complex path, more likely to be challenged in the course of a professional life; but one which should be made - and all European countries more or less agree on these two points - both fluid and secure. And it is well noted that a VAE device, such as has been established in France, allows for progress in this direction.

The VAE is a concept which first and foremost gives access to an individual right, previously unknown in Europe: that of choosing to recognise the achievements of personal, professional and social experience.

It will also be advisable to ensure that, while absorbed in broader provisions, the VAE maintains this guaranteed right and does not depart from a single logic of the external prescription of operators in employment and training, as from this the real development of people's experience depends, like their activities and more widely the working organisations, which depend on the social credibility which arises from support plans for career paths.

[1] Assessment of Professional Titles in 2016: document produced with the support of the Association for the Professional Training of Adults (AFPA) in the context of its public service projects.

Translation (French - English) : EPALE France