So.... competency-based assessment is how the airlines assess their pilots. You see it described as KSA (Knowledge Skills and Attitude) in ATPL theory but apart from that you won't meet this style of assessment at the moment until you do your APS MCC course. Essentially it recognises that flying the aircraft is just a small part of a pilot's skills and tries to set out all the related soft skills such as how you communicate, what your spatial awareness is like and how you work in a team. ICAO define the full set of pilot competencies as
Aircraft Flight Path Management - Manual Control
Aircraft Flight Path Management - Autopilot
Workload Management & Resilience
Situational Awareness
Problem Solving & Decision Making
Leadership & Teamwork
Communication
Application of Procedures
Application of Knowledge
and the possible grades in each competency are unsatisfactory, satisfactory, good, very good and excellent. 1 to 5. You will notice only the first 2 competencies relate directly to aircraft handling. This is just miles away from a standard flight school report ... Bloggs flew a good ILS, bit ropey at the end... landed OK.. but it is the language airlines understand. Assessment in this format is coming naturally to flight training...but slowly. This incentive from BA gives us the chance to insist or at least to encourage flight schools to use this reporting format. It's got to improve an applicant's chances. I'm talking to flight schools now (with my Wings Alliance hat on) to encourage the new format. Aeros are on board already in principle, as are Euro Flight Training in Lee-on -Solent, more hopefully to come.