Health promotion policy seems to be in the process of foregrounding bureaucratic and marketplace accountabilities and downplaying political aspects: capacity building (instead of empowerment); change management (instead of catalysing change); effective leadership (instead of individuals and groups participating in change processes); and quality assurance and monitoring (instead of trust in professional judgment).

The purpose of this paper is to critically explore the formulations of competences and standards in the European project “Developing Competencies and Professional Standards for Health Promotion Capacity Building in Europe”, in short the CompHP project (Dempsey et al. 2011, Speller et al. 2012), and to discuss them in relation to school health promotion. The following questions guide the analysis: Which values and approaches are included and emphasized in the competencies and standards? Are the formulations of the competencies and standards responsive to essential values and approaches in school health promotion?

The project’s aim of developing competency-based standards can be seen in the context of the EU Commission’s agreement to develop flexible governance tools such as standards. These can be characterized as “soft law” tools; i.e., not legally binding, but based on reflexivity and persuasion, and intended to provoke institutions into reflection and self-criticism of their own practice (Moos 2009), filling the gaps between legal regulations (e.g. education acts), and professional norms and actions. Criticism of ‘a competency and standards approach’ in education argues that it is based on an engineering (or a mechanistic) model of education, with a tendency to undervalue professional judgement and experience, and disregard educational values and principles (see e.g. Elliot 2004). This paper is driven by an interest to elucidate this critique by exploring ruptures and matches between the formulations of the competencies and standards in the CompHP project, and the values and approaches prevalent in school health promotion.

The analysis of the CompHP formulations is based on two sets of discursive positions: The first is ‘a logic of production vis-à-vis a logic of development’, juxtaposing economic and democratic values (Ellström 2006, 2009). The second position is ‘systems-centered health promotion vis-à-vis people-centered health promotion’ (Green and Tones 2010).

A logic of production and economic values is prominent in the development of EU higher education policy, including the European qualifications framework, where the European Commission discourses on ‘measurable’ educational outcomes are in the foreground. The Ottawa Charter for health promotion (WHO 1986) emphasizes the key democratic values of empowerment, participation, equality and justice, and refers to a logic of development, while the Bangkok Charter (WHO 2005) introduces an economic discourse of efficiency in health promotion .

Systems-centered health promotion approaches foreground policy and functions, and emphasize organizational development and leadership as key strategies (see e.g. Baric 1996). People-centered health promotion is foregrounding individuals, groups and communities as political actors and subjects in health promotion, and emphasizing the need for strategies and methods that can handle diversity and plurality (see e.g. Raeburn and Rootman 1989).

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