DISCO - European Dictionary of Skills and Competences

DISCO – European Dictionary of Skills and Competences is a structured vocabulary for the description of skills and competences in different contexts such as labour market, education, and training, and the recognition of qualifications. DISCO provides a skills and competences classification that is neither linked to occupations nor to qualifications. Instead it functions as a thesaurus of skills and competences which is based on existing international standards and classifications and thus represents a terminological basis for the description of skills and competences, occupations as well as personal skill profiles and CVs, job vacancies, and job requirements or for describing curricula, courses, Diploma and Certificate Supplements or learning outcomes in general. Available in ten language versions (CZ, DE, EN, ES, FR, HU, IT, LT, SE, SK), DISCO is meant to support transnational comparability of competences acquired in an educational or work context throughout Europe.

DISCO was developed in two projects funded by the Leonardo da Vinci programme and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture. Both projects were carried out together with partners from Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Spain and Sweden. DISCO I took place between September 2004 and February 2008. DISCO II started in November 2010 and ended in October 2012. During the first DISCO project, the following main results have been achieved:

The DISCO thesaurus is based on a comprehensive understanding of skills and competences that include professional competences, personal attitudes, values, behavioural patterns etc. independent of whether they have been acquired formally, non-formally or informally. It consists of about 10,000 terms (about 7,000 preferred terms and 3,000 synonyms) per language for ten European languages: Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Slovak, Spanish and Swedish. Related terms refer to each other where appropriate. The prototypical DISCO I thesaurus has above all focused on the development of a reasonable structure for each field which could be broadened and enlarged with more terms. DISCO has been developed in accordance with several already existing European skills/competence classifications and standards such as the following national classifications of project partner countries, and international classifications:

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