KEY COMPETENCES FOR LIFELONG LEARNING

European Reference Framework

As globalization continues to confront the European Union with new challenges, each citizen will need a wide range of key competences to adapt flexibly to a rapidly changing and highly interconnected world. Education in its dual role,  both social and economic, has a key role to play in ensuring that Europe’s citizens acquire the key competences needed to enable them to adapt flexibly to such changes.



In particular, building on diverse individual competences, the differing needs of learners should be met by ensuring equality and access for those groups who, due to educational disadvantages caused by personal, social, cultural or economic circumstances, need particular support to fulfill their educational potential. Examples of such groups include people with low basic skills, in particular with low literacy, early school-leavers, the long-term unemployed and those returning to work after a period of extended leave, older people, migrants, and people with disabilities.



In this context, the main aims of the Reference Framework are to:



1) identify and define the key competences necessary for personal fulfillment, active citizenship, social cohesion and employability in a knowledge society;



2) support Member States’ work in ensuring that by the end of initial education and training young people have developed the key competences to a level that equips them for adult life and which forms a basis for further learning and working life, and that adults are able to develop and update their key competences throughout their lives;



3) provide a European-level reference tool for policy-makers, education providers, employers, and learners themselves to facilitate national- and European-level efforts towards commonly agreed objectives;



4) provide a framework for further action at Community level both within the Education and Training 2010 work programme and within the Community Education and Training Programmes.

Key competences

Competences are defined here as a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the context. Key competences are those which all individuals need for personal fulfillment and development, active citizenship, social inclusion and employment.

The Reference Framework sets out eight key competences:  

1) Communication in the mother tongue

2) Communication in foreign languages

3) Mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology

4) Digital competence

5) Learning to learn

6) Social and civic competences

7) Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship

8) Cultural awareness and expression

The key competences are all considered equally important, because each of them can contribute to a successful life in a knowledge society. Many of the competences overlap and interlock: aspects essential to one domain will support competence in another. 

Competence in the fundamental basic skills of language, literacy, numeracy and in information and communication technologies (ICT) is an essential foundation for learning, and learning to learn supports all learning activities. 

There are a number of themes that are applied throughout the Reference Framework: critical thinking, creativity, initiative, problem-solving, risk assessment, decision-taking, and constructive management of feelings play a role in all eight key competences.