 Hello and a very warm welcome to our course on Competences for 21st Century Schools. Why is competence-based education such an important and current issue which directly impacts on the very essence and nature of your teaching? Just consider the skills citizens need today in order to meet social and professional challenges, ranging from having the ability to make effective decisions to ensure a sustainable environment to being able to work in multicultural settings with people from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines. This course is intended for teachers and other educational professionals interested in competence-based education. The course aims to provide you with a thorough introduction to the topic, as well as make you aware of the issues and challenges related to making competence-based education a reality in the classroom. The course will give you concrete tips on how to implement project-based learning, a particularly suitable method for delivering competence-based education, as well as on how you might assess this type of learning. Module 1 will provide you with an introduction to the topic, looking at the definition of competences as well as international frameworks, how competences are understood, expressed and implemented in various countries across Europe, and what are the main teaching and assessment methods associated to this approach. Module 2 will look at practical ways in which teachers can use project-based learning techniques in the classroom to develop their pupils' competences across a variety of subjects and skills. Finally, Module 3 will help you understand the assessment methods, which are most suitable to competence-based approaches to learning, and will provide you with concrete advice on how to implement these various methods and in which contexts. Each of the course's modules includes the following sections. Video talks exploring specific issues within the module's theme, presented by researchers, teachers and other educational professionals working in the area of competence-based education, learning activities which you are required to carry out during the week of each module, and which your peers will offer critical feedback on through the course forum, a resource section providing you with suggested articles, videos and other resources that you can consult if you are interested in knowing more, and finally, a short quiz which you are required to complete at the start and end of each module to check you have grasped the main concepts and issues dealt with in the module. Throughout the course, we encourage you to engage in the course forum to exchange with and learn from peers on any of the topics discussed or on your own experiences in implementing competence-based learning. This is your space to actively engage in open peer learning. You can also share your ideas and thoughts via Twitter and via our KeyConnect group on LinkedIn. This course has been designed to improve your competencies so that you can in turn develop those of the young people you teach, work with or on behalf of. We wish you a warm welcome to the course and we hope you're as excited as we are about starting this learning journey together.