Co-constructing a skills reference framework: Second-chance schools

Action research, lasting more than four years, across the entire French national territory, led to the formal redefinition of a skills framework, the Réseau E2C France (École de la 2ème Chance), to support sixteen-to-twenty-five-year-olds without qualifications. This contribution presents the methodological, theoretical, and axiological modalities underlying this framework, whose originality stems from its consideration of the Work-Training-Citizenship relationship, which should inform the development of any framework claiming to define skills. This research shows the significant interest, for a public a priori distant from professional qualifications, of having a system to attest to the quality of their professional experience, integrating proof not only of the professional skills they have acquired but also of the autonomy gained through training and apprenticeship.