Research relevance: understanding of teaching concept related to main function of а teacher in teaching and educating students. In the learning process, teacher should pay special attention to students’ cognitive activity development and try to use it more in learning process, using innovative technologies and interactive methods. Research objectives: consider issues from the concept of teaching, “learning” and “competence” and their essence, to reveal the importance of the competence-based approach in teaching. Research materials and methods: article analyzes essence of learning process and authors give their point of view. Research results: educational process essence and importance of learning based on modern competencies revealed. Conclusions: learning competence includes set of a student’s educational achievements, expressed by level of basic and subject competence at a certain stage in educational process.