Recently, higher vocational education has been championed as a means to develop higher and more complex skills as solutions for facing problems of climate change and rapidly evolving technologies effect on work. In order to understand the nature of  higher vocational education, we undertook at meta-review of technical reports and peer-reviewed publications on higher vocational education in diverse countries (Germany, Spain, UK, Norway, Costa Rica, China and Brazil). Our findings reflected varieties of learning programmes that were identified as higher vocational education, there were 3 notable and potentially problematic insights. Firstly, most of higher vocational education programmes were at a level 5 (higher certificate) and rarely had clear progression either in qualification or career into higher skilled occupations, for example in the UK and Norway. Secondly, there is some difficulty in identifying how higher vocational education and higher tertiary education were different, for example in Spain. Thirdly, and most problematically - the definition for higher skills development in most context was poor defined. The presentation unpacks what is needed for a clearer definition of higher skills development in higher vocational education by using occupations as an enclosure for training for practice that reflect real-world career progression routes. 

The papers uses a multi-disciplinary occupations conceptual framework (Alphonsus, 2023) which combines concepts from philosophy of education, sociology of work and political economy which is applied to over 30 technical reports from international organisations and peer-reviewed publications.

The presentation unpacks what is needed for a clearer definition of higher skills development in higher vocational education by using occupations as an enclosure for training for practice that reflect real-world career progression routes.

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