Abstract:

21st century education sets new challenges in terms of ensuring development of skills and competences that could enable the citizen of the 21st century to compete on the labor market and contribute to the development of the country and the world in general. Independence, constructive thinking, collaboration, creativity besides other specific skills needed for the concrete specialty, have to be the skills that make the citizen of today find his/her place in the society and contribute to the future development of life.

The above mentioned sets the new objectives for the system of education at all levels, starting from kindergarten, finishing with higher education institutions. This requires from the educational institutions to be oriented on upbringing real professionals, equipped with the knowledge and skills matching the real world requirements, more than ever before.

Due to the mentioned universities have to make sure that the educational programmes together with study courses build those competences that ensure dealing with real-life situations for the graduates. The map of competences and the syllabuses must serve as the ground on the basis of what delivery of the knowledge the level to what extend the skills can be elaborated, can be ensured as well as measured adequately. Syllabuses of the educational programmes are responsible for provision not only the “staying-on-the –paper” competences, but allow the graduates to benefit from as well as measure the real potential of the own achievement.

The aim of our research is to reveal the status of the educational programmes in higher education institutions in Georgia. In other words, the focus of the presented paper is to identify the quality of education as well as the capacity of the educational programmes to ensure provision of high quality education so that the graduate is competent and able to cope with the challenges he/she has to face while doing his/her job under the requirements of the current labor market.

The methodology of the research is based on the international best practice, through the literature review and investigation of the exiting Georgian reality followed up with the comparative analysis.

The findings of the presented paper demonstrate the need of awareness rising in the “Philosophy” of competence-based learning and the main “pillars” of it the correct development of which can truly contribute to building of the competence and the skills necessary for the graduate of the educational programmes to be competative on the current labor market.

Keywords:

Competencies, Skills, Competence-based learning, Teaching and learning methods, Assessment methods, Higher Education.