[2] The origin of qualification structures can be traced back to organized education in antique civilizations such as Greece, Sparta, Rome and China.
As no specialized career structure existed in these cultures, organized education focused on broad issues of international citizenship, and not on professional preparedness, which was achieved mainly through informal apprenticeships.
In this respect the Chinese civilization was the most organized, with a series of levels attached to examinations, which in turn granted the right of access to public office.
The nineteenth century brought with it a wave of liberalism and consciousness of equal rights and opportunities, accompanied by increased specialization and bureaucratization.
During the twentieth century the emphasis shifted to human capital theory and technological development, eventually leading to concerns whether the education system was able to meet the demands of the labour market.
[2] During the late 1980s, and strongly influenced by the thinking on integration but also by a focus on professional training through a competency approach, the notion of a National Qualification Frameworks (NQF) emerged in the United Kingdom.
[7] Within this politically charged melting pot of factors, and a renewed emphasis on the importance of lifelong learning, the first NQFs were established in Australia, England, Scotland, New Zealand, Ireland and South Africa between 1989 and 1995.
[8][9] In the case of France, the NQF drew on a hierarchy of qualifications that found official expression at the end of 1960s in a nomenclature which tried to rationalize the number of students leaving the education and training system to correspond with the needs of the labour market.
[2] Across the first-generation countries, NQFs were conceptualized as hierarchical classifications of levels of formal learning programmes and their associated qualifications and certificates.
As a result, the interrelationship between competences and learning outcomes was not only firmly embedded in qualifications framework thinking from the very outset, but was also used in a hybridized form.
[2] The idea of a set of world reference levels was considered in May 2012, during the Third International Congress on professional education, held in Shanghai, China.
The framework defines requirements (called "benchmarks") for the entire process, from curriculum design to delivery, including the management and support of online and blended learning.
They are designed to support the reviewing of specified learning outcomes and assessment criteria in order to develop particular modules and units and to assign credits at the appropriate level.
[20] The key mechanism through which the learning outcomes approach is being implemented is qualifications frameworks, but there are also others, such as within curriculum reform on both national and international levels.
The Tuning Project, which started in 2000, stands out as a good example of the introduction of learning outcomes outside of, but nonetheless related to, qualifications frameworks.