Journal of Vocational Education & Training

Debating outcomes-based qualifications

Outcomes-based qualifications in vocational education are a ‘global phenomenon’ (CEDEFOP, 2024). While outcomes-based qualifications have their origins in Anglophone countries (Hodge, 2007; Newton, Curcin, Clarke, & Brylka, 2024a), they are now ubiquitous in countries in the global North and South, although the processes of policy diffusion differ in each case (Allais, 2014). They are part of the vocational education global ‘toolkit’ (Allais, 2025; McGrath, 2012) which policy-makers have used to for a range of purposes, underpinned by assumptions that may or may not be correct. Policy makers have seen them as tools to align the purposes and outcomes of vocational education with requirements of the labour market. Some believe that learning outcomes “influence the links and the collaboration between different stakeholders” such as employers, unions, government, and educational institutions (CEDEFOP, 2024, p.7). Further, some believe that learning outcomes increase the ‘transparency’ of qualifications’ purposes and outcomes; enable alignment between curriculum, processes of learning and assessment of learning; underpin systemic governance and quality assurance processes; and provide a framework for lifelong learning and learning pathways. The premise of the learning outcomes model of qualifications is that learning outcomes are the link between system governance, system design, qualification design, and micro-processes of pedagogy and assessment (Lassnigg, 2012). While ‘tight’ models of outcomes-based education tied to work-place requirements are most associated with vocational education, outcomes-based models of curriculum and qualifications are increasingly influential in schools and higher education, although in many cases the adherence to a learning outcome approach is little more than nominal.

The scope of outcomes-based education includes competency-based training models of curriculum which are explicitly tied to work-place tasks, roles and requirements, but outcomes-based education can encompass qualifications designed to serve other purposes (Newton, Curcin, Clarke, & Brylka, 2024c). In a body of work undertaken for Ofqual, the regulatory authority for qualifications in the schools and further education sectors in England, researchers define outcomes-based qualifications as those in which “teaching, learning, and assessment plans are based on the same explicit statement of intended learning outcomes (related to the qualifications intended purposes), in order to achieve educational goals that rely heavily on the kind of transparency that this provides” (Newton, 2025). Outcomes-based qualifications are comprised by aggregating individual learning outcomes from the ground-up. “In other words, the qualification standard ultimately resides at the level of the individual learning outcome” (Newton et al., 2024a, p.20).

Yet, despite their ubiquity, outcomes-based qualifications remain controversial and debates are polarised between those who support them and those who do not (Hodge, 2016; Newton, Curcin, Clarke, & Brylka, 2024b; Wheelahan, 2015). Winch (2023, p.21) explains that the “language of learning outcomes and associated terminology such as ‘competence’, ‘output’ and ‘assessment criterion’ is becoming a global phenomenon…More than three decades after its adoption, its fortunes still seem to be increasing, despite a dubious record of achievement and some hard-hitting but relatively ineffectual criticism”. One major line of argument is that the underlying design assumptions are flawed, and thus that the goals stated for learning outcomes cannot be achieved.

This special issue seeks to explore the reasons why outcomes-based qualifications remain both so widely supported and so controversial. We welcome conceptual articles, but we particularly welcome empirical articles that provide evidence about whether the learning outcomes model achieves its objectives, and if so, the extent to which it achieves these objectives.

We invite submissions that address these themes:

• What are outcomes-based qualifications? Can we establish a coherent conceptual framework and terminology for discussing and evaluating them, and if so, how can we do so, so that there is an agreed way of exploring the problems related to outcomes-based qualification design? Here submissions may consider how terminology and understandings of learning outcomes differ across international contexts, or different parts of education and training systems.
• What are the ‘problems’ that outcomes-based education is seeking to solve? What ‘theories of change’ are implicit in debates about outcomes-based education? Is there empirical evidence of them solving these problems? ‘Problems’ include, but are not limited to:
• Aligning vocational education qualifications more closely to the ‘requirements’ of the labour market
• How to implement ‘demand driven’ systems in contrast to putative ‘producer driven’ systems
• Facilitating pathways, credit accumulation (as with micro-credentials), credit transfer, recognition of prior learning and/or accreditation of prior experiential learning
• Bringing greater uniformity and intelligibility to a nation’s suite to qualifications
• Are outcomes-based qualifications possible in their own terms? Are qualifications the sum of their parts (through aggregating individual learning outcomes) or should the premise be holistic, in which the ‘parts’ are derived from the whole? This is the ontological question. What kinds of knowledge are accessible through learning outcomes? Can knowledge be tied to individual outcomes, or should the starting point be disciplinary systems of meaning? This is the epistemological question. If there is a problem with outcomes-based qualifications, is the ‘problem’ intrinsic to their design, or is the problem one of implementation?
• To what extent are outcomes-based qualifications a ‘technical’ issue of qualification design and can outcomes-based qualifications be separated from the social, political, economic, and policy context in which they are enacted? What is the ‘social settlement’ that underpins outcomes-based qualifications? What are the stakeholder interests in outcomes-based qualifications and whose interests tend to dominate? (e.g. employers, trade unions, governments, qualifications regulator bodies etc.)?
• Are outcomes-based qualifications ‘fit for purpose’? What are the purposes they are meant to serve? How is their definition related to different conceptions of occupational competence? Can they provide the framework for expansive concepts of occupational competence? Can they provide the framework for ‘just-in-time’ and ‘just-for-now’ skills development such as micro-credentials?
• Is it possible to envisage ‘hybrid’ qualifications that incorporate elements of outcomes-based education with a ‘classical’ focus on inputs? Or, are stated learning outcomes in fact inputs, stated in a different way? What are the key ‘decision-points’ that would need to be made in developing hybrid qualifications?
• Is it possible to envisage an ‘ecology’ of qualifications within national systems where different design types serve similar purposes, or does there need to be more rationalisation so that purposes are more tightly associated with particular design approaches?
• What are the challenges for governance, quality assurance, and funding for outcomes-based qualifications? To what extent do subsystems such as quality assurance and accountability have a bearing on the way in which OBQs are taught and assessed?
• What are the challenges for teacher preparation in understanding OBQs, in teaching them and in ensuring that design purposes are realised?