ABSTRACT
The basis of National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) and Scottish Vocational Qualifications (SVQs) is occupational competence. Love them or loath them, S/NVQs are here to stay. We need therefore to consider how best to deliver them for people who aspire to them. That means examining how we enable the learners to achieve competence. This chapter looks first at the definition of ‘competence’ and at what that implies for the learning we must design in order to help its achievement. It then looks at open and flexible learning (OFL) and what it has to offer for competence-oriented learners. Finally, it looks at work, sponsored by ED in the last few years, on learning design to help the development of competence. There is no recipe for open learning designed for competence. There are in fact a lot of questions and challenges for OFL designers and developers if they are to get the best from OFL, and realise its potential for developing competence in the widest sense.
