20. Executive summary

The National Competence Accounts are a development project indicating new ways to analyse human resources. The Accounts map out ten key competences regarding literacy, learning, self management, creativity and innovation, culture, environment, health, social relations, communication and democracy – factors impacting growth and welfare. In addition, they include a presentation of three theme analyses, which illustrate competence policy issues within the areas of corporate innovation and competence, the seniors in the labour market and people with short formal educations. In this way, the Accounts include a situation report listing strategic competence challenges.

As the only country in the world, Denmark has prepared competence accounts based on an OECD project, and it is therefore not possible to put the results into an international perspective or make comparisons time-wise.

The results show that several factors divide the Danes. The National Competence Accounts indicate that education pays off in more than one sense. Education develops not only knowledge and skills, but is also the one factor that, broadly speaking, seems to be of the greatest importance for the development and blossoming of the ten key competences.

However, education per se does not guarantee good key competences. All the same, education ceteris paribus provides access to workplaces and ways of life, in which these competences develop and blossom. The environment and circumstances in the sense of opportunities and conditions mean a great deal for the development of the individual's competences.

In a globalised world, in which innovation, adjustment and development are the order of the day, employers, on the one hand, and further education and in-service courses, on the other, will determine how competences develop and blossom. A company's ability to organise itself dynamically and focus on continuous development will become a central resource in the future, if learning is to become life-long.

The National Competence Accounts list a number of competence challenges that will demand increasing attention in coming years: firstly, it is about creating an educational lift, geared towards both strengthening the breadth of the resource base, resulting in a general higher level of education and also furthering initiatives to foster particularly innovation and the conditions for growth-stimulating entrepreneurial enterprise. Secondly, through recognition of real competences, the challenge is to highlight the resources of the labour force, not least the resources of people with short formal educations, to smooth their way to access the labour market and thereby further education and learning. Education is the route to the job market and provides access to places of work; recognition of real competences can pave the way, but in no sense would this fulfil the requirement for learning and higher qualifications. The enormous challenge to stimulate and further competence development in the labour market will remain, ensuring that a greater number of companies will go further in becoming learning and dynamic organisations, creating new jobs whenever old ones are lost, and in this way improve the welfare of all in Denmark.

Denne side indgår i publikationen "Det Nationale Kompetenceregnskab - hovedrapport" som kapitel 20 af 23
© Undervisningsministeriet 2005