24. What are occupational areas?

The breakdown with the traditional trend of designing occupational descriptions at the level of job positions has fostered a new way of classifying and describing occupations according to occupational areas. These are general groups of similar occupations that share the same technical and scientific principles or that are carried out within the same sectoral environments.

Many countries have classified the labour market according to large occupational areas. The common factor in such areas is representing a group of occupations that are alike which, as such, imply similar environments, materials, relationships and knowledge.

Since one labour function can occur in various fields of the economic activity, CONOCER(1) (Mexico) has introduced the concept of an area of competency as a group of functions that apply to one same type of work regarding the production of goods and services in a similar way.

The occupational vocational training system of Spain also uses a quite similar concept. By the term Vocational Area, they mean a group of occupations within the framework of one stage of, or the whole productive processes and/or productive activity that may have vocational contents in common.

In order to establish vocational areas, sectoral studies and a repertoire of occupations are taken into account. These inputs are grouped according to labour processes and training contents in common, in such a way that, occupations which have similar characteristics make up a Vocational Area.

Occupational Areas of National Vocational Qualifications in the United Kingdom 1. Keeping the land, plants and animals 2. Extraction of natural resources 3. Engineering 4. Manufacturing 5. Transportation 6. Goods and services 7. Social and Health Services 8. Financial and Business Services 9. Communication 10. Development of knowledge

Source: www.qca.org.uk

Areas of competency in the Mexican system 1. Agro-industrial and forestry plantations and animal husbandry processing 2. Extraction and benefit 3. Building industry 4. Technology 5. Telecommunications 6. Manufacturing 7. Transportation 8. Sales of goods and services 9. Financing, management and administrative support services 10. Health and social protection 11. Social communication 12. Development and extension of knowledge

Source: CONOCER

Occupational fields in the system of New Zealand 1. Agriculture, forestry and fisheries 2. Arts and crafts 3. Business 4. Community and social services 5. Computing and information technology 6. Core generic 7. Education 8. Engineering and technology 9. Health 10. Humanities 11. Law and security 12. Manufacturing 13. Maori 14. Planning and construction 15. Sciences 16. Service sector 17. Social sciences

Source: www.govt.nz

When these areas of occupational performance are associated with different levels of competency and these are, at the same time, articulated with the existing educational offer of a country we are facing a National Qualification Framework. Countries have recently defined these frameworks of reference in order to harmonise their employment policies, training and education. Furthermore, the introduction of these frameworks facilitates mobility and allows making the concept of continuing learning real.

 

 

 

 

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1 CONOCER, Sistemas normalizados y de certificación de competencia laboral, Mexico, 1997.