Expediency of Appeal to the Competency-based Approach and Competency Model of the High School Graduate

The present study focuses on the problem of education quality in the modern world: as the contemporary social order reflects the transformation of many countries, including Russia, from industrial to post-industrial, information society. Consequently, the requirements for a specialist and his professional training are changing. In modern market conditions, professionalism, professional experience, the foundations of which are laid in the university, are considered factors in the competitiveness of a young specialist. The article explores the problem of a competency-based approach to teaching, which was introduced not as a recommendation, but as a new paradigm, the observance of which is mandatory when training specialists in higher education (as well as secondary schools).The purpose of the article is to consider the essential characteristics, complexity, and versatility of the concept of competency, about which a great deal of information has been accumulated in both foreign and Russian scientific research, but neither here nor there knowledge of competence has been conceptualized. The authors demonstrate that in the practice of education the use of the form in which the competencies “knowledge, skills and expertise” exist now is not so different from the former orientation to Knowledge, Abilities, Skills (KASs). This is because the way they are spelled out in competences and recommended for implementation is more like a formal approach than a focus on development.