Ranking skill

Section 3.1 examined the issue of what should be counted as skill, and hence of what should be included in a metric that can accurately capture quantitative variation in the skill content of different jobs. This section looks at the options for capturing qualitative

variation, i.e. criteria by which one kind of skill can be ranked as “better” or “higher” than another.

3.2.1. The relevance of occupational hierarchy

The fundamental problem with the high/low opposition is that it can be interpreted in two fundamentally different senses. The basic ambiguity is illustrated by Allen Consulting (2006: 21) when they begin by arguing that:

Firms in developed countries are… operating in niche, higher value added markets and so are demanding higher level skills. This is true at all levels in the workforce – high value niche production requires very high level and specific technical skills, but the automation of basic processes also requires a higher level of skill at other levels of the workforce. [emphasis in original]

but go on, two paragraphs later, to write:

Those firms we surveyed who regard themselves as world class have a substantially lower proportion of labourers and process workers and a higher proportion of technicians and paraprofessionals in their workforce than other firms, resulting in a higher level of skill overall [emphasis added].

What these two quotes suggest, taken together, is that two alternative definitions of high skill are in play. On the one hand, we have the traditional view of a hierarchy of skill, corresponding to a hierarchy of qualifications, corresponding to a hierarchy of occupations – unskilled, semi-skilled, skilled, technician, professional. A professional is by definition more highly skilled than a technician, a technician than a tradesman, and so on down the scale. On the other, we have the proposition that it is possible to distinguish between high and low skill at any level in the occupational or qualifications hierarchy, and that increasing the level of skill is important regardless of where one stands on that ladder.

The first view implies that gradations of skill quality could be accurately measured if only the hierarchy of qualifications and/or occupational classifications were precisely aligned

could be used with confidence as a proxy for the latter. This approach, referred to here as the alignment model, is the one generally followed in Australian occupational

classifications. The latest version, the 2006 Australian and New Zealand Standard

Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO), classifies occupations by level and specialisation of skill. Level is “defined as a function of the range and complexity of the set of tasks performed” (ABS 2005: 3). In practice, however, it is measured in terms of “the level or amount of formal education and training, the amount of previous experience in a related occupation and the amount of on-the-job training required to competently perform the set of tasks required”. The underlying assumption is that “the greater the range and complexity of the tasks involved, the greater the amount of formal education and training, previous experience and on-the-job training that are required to competently perform the set of tasks” (ABS 2005: 4). This approach to occupational skill classification contrasts fundamentally with that followed in the US to develop the O*NET classification and its predecessor, the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, which are further discussed in section 3.3.

This version of the alignment model aims to align the hierarchy of occupations with an assumed “real” hierarchy of skill. Training and informal learning are used as avowed proxies; the latter in its turn is proxied by experience, but training is not explicitly proxied by level of qualification. A different version of the model sets out to align the hierarchy of formal qualifications with skill; this approach is favoured by educators and is embodied in the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF).

The second view implies an alternative approach of separating skill level and qualification level into two axes to form a kind of two-dimensional map. The terms chosen here to characterise the two axes are qualification and skill deepening. However, the X axis could equally well refer to level in the occupational hierarchy. The assumption underlying this model, referred to here as the deepening model, is that the two axes measure different things. The “qualifications” axis represents different kinds of work or skill content, reflecting different and complementary roles in the production process and work

organisation. The “deepening” axis captures common elements of skill which are capable of continuous enhancement over the course of a career (and hence provide a rationale for career paths), regardless of where one stands in the qualifications hierarchy. The generic concept is represented by Figure 3.1.

The X axis in this diagram is labelled in deliberately ambiguous terms, since the words “basic”, “intermediate” and “professional” can be applied equally to qualification levels and to occupational levels. In any real application it would refer to either one or the other, since the implications are subtly different in each case:

• the occupational hierarchy is an institutional aspect of work organisation whereby the work of society is broken down into groups of generic tasks performed by different classes of worker (labourers, clerks, tradespeople, paraprofessionals, professionals) arranged in a conventionally recognised hierarchy of esteem. This hierarchy largely (though not always) determines how different jobs are valued socially and rewarded financially. The reasons particular tasks are handled at a given level in the hierarchy are often a matter of history and accepted practice (sometimes codified in industrial agreements), as is the grouping of tasks. There is a general assumption that jobs towards the top of the hierarchy involve more complex or difficult mixtures of skills than those towards the bottom, but the

association is loose and not always evidence-based: it is more common for the skill content of a job to be inferred from its position in the hierarchy than for a job to be located in the hierarchy based on an explicit analysis of its skill content;

• the qualifications hierarchy is part of the education system, another high-level institution, which determines that different kinds and combinations of skills will be learned in different settings (schools, university, long-cycle VET, ad-hoc short courses, workplaces), over different timescales, using different teaching and assessment strategies, with different knowledge prerequisites, and with different kinds of certification or sometimes none at all. The implicit skill-related hierarchy applies only to this last element of certification, which is used as a proxy for all the others, though it is arguably those other factors which constitute the (imperfect) predictors of skill content. Since higher-ranked qualifications generally require more formal and theoretically based learning, the hierarchy effectively ranks qualifications according to their codified knowledge content.

HIGH