Access roles in Skillsbank

Skillsbank allows for several actors to have access into the system. An organisation can have several access roles simultaneously. These are Competent Body, Institution, and Course Provider. It is possible for an organisation to play all three roles in Skillsbank. As an individual user you can have access as an Assessor, End User or Mentor.

The Competent Body (CB) is an organisation or institution that is the “owner” of a qualification. It is responsible for qualification definitions and to quality-proof the qualifications. The Competent Body will therefore have access to add qualifications and learning outcomes into Skillsbank. Examples of organisations that fit this description are Ministries of Education, sectorial organisations, or institutions or schools working within the realm of just a few qualifications.

The Competent Body is responsible to add corresponding assessment questions to the qualification. These questions will serve as the assessment base for the User and the Assessor. Due to the Competent Body’s responsibility of qualification definitions, it is also in charge of adding Assessors to Skillsbank. Assessors are individuals that the Competent Body views as qualified to perform adequate, reliable and valid assessments of individuals. If qualifications exist in several languages, then the Competent Body has the responsibility to add the translations into Skillsbank.

An Assessor is certified and authorised as an expert by a Competent Body. The Assessor is given access to assess an individual’s competences only within the framework of the qualifications the relevant Competent Body is responsible for. You will assess the students according to the assessment questions registered to every qualification unit. The assessor uses the set of questions to evaluate the level of competence of the learner, combined with other available documentation of performance.

Those organisations with access as an Institution in Skillsbank are institutions that are offering education and training. They can therefore add courses and modules they are providing into Skillsbank. These courses and modules have to be linked up to an existing qualification and the respective learning outcomes. The Institution is at the implementing level and defines users, mentors and guidance officers in Skillsbank. The Institution is therefore responsible of adding mentors and users to the system. It can see the outcome of the RPL assessment score of a particular user and the assessor of that user, together with the consolidated scores.

Those organisations and institutions that have access as a Course Provider are those offering education and training only. They can therefore add courses and modules they are providing into Skillsbank. These courses and modules have as well to be linked up with a relevant qualification and learning outcomes. When having access as Course Provider the only option is to add courses, however in most cases organisations have access as both Institution and Course Provider and thus the combined rights of these two into Skillsbank. In some cases, it is possible that organisations have access as Competent Body as well.

Learner participants, trainees, students, apprentices or other persons that search for career guidance in a lifelong learning perspective, will have access as End Users. They are given access details by the institution they belong to. They have the option to add all attended courses and training and work experience, as well as uploading supporting documents.

As part of competence mapping of users, they will also have the option of assessing their own competences through the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) Assessments module. In practice this means that both an Assessor and an End User are assigned to Skillsbank. The user assesses their own competences according to assessment questions that are directly related to a qualification matrix that is already added into the system. The Assessor then assesses the results of the End User, and provides a report on the user’s actual competence.

With access as a Mentor you are a teacher, a guidance officer or in a similar role that is mentoring learners. You are given access by the institution that has qualified you as a mentor. With mentor access you have the right to see all the information a learner has added about themselves into Skillsbank. As a Mentor you play a guiding and supporting role towards the students and their career development.