ASSIGNMENT OF SOCIAL WORK PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATIONS BY UKRAINIAN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS: WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS?

In social work, considerable attention is paid to the assignment of professional qualifications. This could be explained by the applied nature of the activities of social workers and the requirements for the quality of their services.This paper aims to overview the current regulatory requirements for the assignment of professional qualifications and to analyze the practice of their assignment by the higher education institutions (HEIs) that prepare social work students, as well as by qualification centers. The research is based on the document analysis (texts of legislation and other legal regulations of Ukraine; educational and occupational standards; materials of accreditation cases available on the NAQA website, descriptions of educational programs, etc.).The analysis of the normative documents confirms that full or partial professional qualification are described in the approved occupational standard, which contains the name of the professional qualification, job functions, expected competencies, etc. HEIs intending or that intend to award professional qualifications must take into account the requirements of the relevant occupational standard.The practice of assigning professional qualifications in HEIs does not meet these expectations. Some professional qualifications were invented by the institutions themselves, some were taken from the Classifier of Professions, and some from the Handbook of Qualification Characteristics of Employees. HEIs do not pay attention to what level of education is required by the standard or Handbook, what subject specialization is specified in these documents. The assignment of professional qualification is mainly automatic, without additional verification of existing learners’ competencies.At the same time, qualification centers have begun to operate in Ukraine. They also assign professional qualifications, in particular in social work, but exclusively on the basis of the appropriate occupational standard. The paper discusses possible steps to streamline and to regulate the issue of assigning professional qualifications.