Recognizing, accumulating, and transferring credits is every field is important. In the field of Vocational Education and Training acknowledging skills and competencies, acquired through professional training is even more essential.
In Europe, individuals who have gone through training both within their countries or the other Member States deserve to be assessed and certified. In Europe today, ECVET is a great system that makes all of this possible.
What is ECVET?
ECVET is a system created by stakeholders within the European Union, aiming at recognizing, accumulating, and transferring credits in the field of vocational education and training. The aim is to officially recognize the qualifications for learners of the secondary vocational education, initial and continuing vocational education and training.
How does it work?
The idea behind the ECVET system is to create a framework that will be common for all European countries. The framework will use a common language. The qualification will test skills and competencies that will be considered common for everyone in Europe. ECVET aims to support the recognition of learning outcomes acquired through formal, non-formal, and even informal process learning.
What are the Key Elements of ECVET?
ECVET is characterized by the key elements below:
- Learning outcomes
- Qualifications/titles
- Subunits/Units of learning outcomes
- Credit points
- ECVET points
How can ECVET help the labor market
One of the most common problems that young people today face is the lack of qualifications. However, if we take it a step further, we notice that in many cases, the qualifications are there. They are just not recognized properly.
There is a big gap in the vocational education and training sector. Although the people with appropriate training are plenty, their education has not been officially recognized. As a result, we have teachers with all the appropriate credentials apart from the legal document that will qualify their skills and competencies as VET professionals.
The ECVET technically issues that official document, helping people across Europe get qualified as VET professionals thus creating more job positions and opportunities.
The Erasmus+ funded programme YeCh: Youth Volunteering Certification has created an Establishment of Credit system that will:
- Allocate ECVET points of qualifications
- Determine the relative weights of units in qualifications
- Allocate ECVET points to Units
- Develop a competence Profile Schema
- Create a memorandum of understanding pack
You can learn more about the project’s outcomes and certification opportunities by visiting the official website.
