National qualifications framework:a critical analysis of an important approach to education reform

The project was a Post-Doctoral Fellowship for Dr Stephanie Allais, and enabled her to build on her PhD research on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) of South Africa, and a one-year post at the International Labour Office conducting a 16-country study of NQFs across the globe. The fellowship was devoted to synthesising the findings of these and other studies and placing them in a broader theoretical context. Findings include:

- Policy borrowing has been a major factor in the international spread of NQFs, often accompanied by inadequate understanding of the implications of the different contexts in which they were introduced.

- The implementation of NQFs has often been problematic, and their success in achieving their objectives has been mixed. They have rarely matched the high aspirations that accompanied their introduction.

- Learning outcomes have been a problematic instrument for driving educational change.

- NQFs are a reflection of a broader trend for education policy to reflect the values, language and analytical tools of neoclassical economics