We have seen some wonderful programs that are in place in high schools to assess the learning of young people with extraordinary skill in one area and perhaps lower skill in another. Prior learning assessment can evaluate that learning and give academic credit for it, so that the extraordinary student doesn't have to take a course in which he or she already has the learning.
That, however, is not the history of prior learning in Canada. Prior learning in Canada started because people with a lot of knowledge and skills acquired through work and life experience did not have a credential, and those without a credential are disadvantaged in the labour force because employers often consider a credential to be a proxy for knowledge and skills. That was essentially how prior learning appealed to adults. They wanted to get a credential, and having their prior learning assessment done first would reduce the time and money required to get that credential, which was viewed--and continues to be viewed--as a barrier.
The same thing applies to immigrants to Canada. Many immigrants want to have a Canadian credential because they see it as having more cachet than a credential from another country. Again, if a prior learning assessment is in place, the repetition of learning is reduced.
That applies to all of us--to those of us who have been working for 25 years and may have gotten our first credentials at the front end of our working lives, but who now want to switch careers and get into something else. We want to have credentials either in the paid or unpaid labour force to help us get into that second career, or we want to get another credential in a completely different area. Again, some part of that knowledge and those skills is transferable. To support a system that allows learning competencies to be assessed before additional training takes place makes intuitive sense, so that we don't all start back at the beginning with an 18-year-old when in fact we're 40, we're in mid-career, and we want to have our existing learning assessed for the purposes of a new credential.