“CREDIT”, as a means of rewarding and accumulating achievement, has been around a long time. It was a big idea in the 1980s and early 1990s, but was deemed too difficult or too frightening. But it may be about to come into its own, and we certainly need it now more than ever.

The complex problems that credit can help to tackle have been moving steadily up this Government’s list of priorities. How can learning help tackle social exclusion? How can it be made to chime with people’s lives, their needs and aspirations, so that its value is recognised by those who most need it? How can we be sure that learning will help develop the skills people need to be effective employees and active citizens? How are we going to develop the skilled, qualified and educated workforce needed for the 21st century?

In tackling these questions the role of credit becomes increasingly apparent as a key part of the solution. Hence the recent interest of ministers in credit and unitisation: an interest embracing local initiatives as well as national qualifications, and spanning learning and skills at all levels through to higher education. Whether you are looking at workforce or personal development, basic skills or access to HE, credit has a role to play. Maybe, at last, the potential of credit is about to be fully realised.

If so there is by now a wealth of practical experience to draw on. However, if a credit-based system is to be further developed, it is essential that we are clear about what we are trying to accomplish.

My list of objectives would include: more and wider participation in learning; more progression with no “dead-ends” so that people can realise their true potential; more achievement that is formally recognised; more and better learning opportunities that are responsive to clearly identified needs; more flexibility; real choice for learners with guidance on how those choices can help them achieve their aspirations.

Clarity about what credit means and how it contributes to these things is essential. The transparency that credit provides and the opportunity to accumulate learning achievement towards desired goals are of course critical. But unless the concepts that underpin credit are understood, we will invest a lot of resources creating a better system for those who will achieve well anyway. If credit becomes only a system of attaching numbers to existing qualifications, helping to make the traditional system more measurable and comparable, we will waste time and lose a real opportunity. Knowing how many credit points an existing A-level or national vocational qualification is worth is not going to widen participation much or make our system more responsive and flexible. It is the processes used in the credit-based system which stimulate professional engagement, foster flexibility, develop and assure quality, build and support progression and recognise achievement.

The local and national model of the existing credit system needs to be maintained and promulgated. The main credit in further education has developed as a “bottom-up” system. It operates as a responsive and flexible local service that can recognise highly customised and individualised local achievement, and locate it within a national framework of standards. The model is essential for supporting a learner-centred approach, and it fits well with the new national and local infrastructure for learning and skills.

Such a local and national credit system can provide the essential device to enable a genuinely learner-centred system of lifelong learning to become a reality.

Let us not underestimate what a huge ambition a learner-centred, demand-led system is. Learning is no longer simply about study and courses. Not only will our knowledge and skills need to be continuously updated, but how we learn and for what purposes will also continue to change. We are talking about a system catering for mass customisation and continuous change; a system that can cope with the fast-moving demands of employers competing in global markets, while simultaneously supporting ownership of learning in socially-deprived neighbourhoods. We are seeking to overturn the effects of decades of exclusion.

Credit itself cannot accomplish this: it will take people of ideas and imagination, working co-operatively towards agreed goals. But credit, properly defined and understood, can help translate those ideas into learning and achievement for those who are not getting what they should from our system.

We do not need a revolution to do this, because credit is already an essential element in important parts of that system. But we do need greater clarity, shared purpose, and determination.

Carole Stott is chief executive of the National Open College Network