1Stseminar: Setting the Basis for Cooperation

Synthesis Report

ECVET Pilot Projects

1stSeminar: Setting the basis for cooperation

Brussels, 23-24 April 2009

Venue: Novotel Brussels centre – Tour Noire, rue de la Vierge noire 32, 1000 Brussels

1introduction

2the ecvet project web-site

3Future seminars

Annex A– additional project information

Annex B – analysis of evaluation questionnaires

1introduction

The main objectives of the first seminar of the ECVET pilot projects were to:

-Establish contact among the projects and get a better understanding of their work;

-Discuss how the projects will use the web-site designed as part of the cooperation activities; and

-Agree on topics for the two seminars in Paris and Berlin;

The seminar started with a welcome from the European Commission and the Executive Agency. The Executive Agency presented the difference in the role of the Commission (in charge of developing and following up policies) and that of the Agency (in charge of the funding programmes with regard to the centralised actions not managed at national level). After the introduction the objectives of the seminar were outlined and followed by a tour de table during which participants also expressed their expectations from the seminar and the cooperation activities more broadly.

The afternoon of the first day was mostly dedicated to two workshop sessions in which projects representatives were invited to answer questions from other projects. The questions built on project descriptions contained in the first issue of the ECVET bulletin and were collected prior to the seminar. This questions and answers session was facilitated by GHK.

Additional information obtained on projects during this afternoon is presented in the Annex A of this synthesis.

Day one ended with three presentations. The first presentation by Cedefop concerned the wider ECVET context and the way other European instruments complement the objectives as well as the technical aspects of ECVET. The second presentation outlined a number of lessons that the ECVET pilot projects can learn from the EQF ones and similarly the last presentation highlighted some useful approaches from previous ECVET projects, focusing on those projects not represented in the audience.

All the presentations can be downloaded from the web-site:

Day two was dedicated to discussions on the future cooperation arrangements and the outcomes are presented in the following two sections of this synthesis.

Finally the analysis of the evaluation questionnaire is attached in the Annex B.

2the ecvet project web-site

The web-site designed by GHK to disseminate information about projects activities can be found at: .

It is ‘work-in-progress’ and currently contains most of the more ‘static’ elements that will be used for dissemination such as:

-The brief presentation of ECVET

-The section on projects descriptions

-The part on project seminars

Though the original idea was that the project information part of the web-site will be substantial, the projects strongly favoured a different approach. The project descriptions would remain succinct with a link to their own web-site where more information will be provided. The GHK site would mainly:

-Present outcomes of common work in the tool-box – e.g. methodologies and good practice identified and agreed during seminars;

-Provide an interactive forum part;

For the tool-box – this will be populated by:

-GHK: when it comes to documentation of good practice and methods resulting from the common work;

-Project promoters: concerning documents that the project produces and wants to share;

The forum – participants presented some suggestions such as enabling an online chat (in written or over the phone form). It was noted that such exchanges could serve for preparation for seminars for example. At the same time it was underlined that this requires substantial moderation and that in order to be of added value more than a few people need to participate. The forum will be developed later in 2009 and it will take the form best suited to the needs of the cooperation among projects.

3Themes and Future seminars

The activities of projects can be broadly summarised as following the stages presented in Table 1 below. All projects agreed that their work follows similar structure even though some of them have already completed certain stages as part of pervious projects or before submitting a response to the call for proposals to the Commission. Also not all projects will pay even attention to all the stages. For example while some projects are particularly concerned with the stages of ‘conception’ others are more focusing on those related to creating ‘conditions for credit transfer’, such as the reflection and design of suitable assessment and validation approaches.

It was agreed that these stages can be used to formulate the themes for the upcoming seminars. The seminar in Paris (2-3 July) would therefore focus on two main topics:

-Partnership – Design a suitable network for credit transfer – which competent institutions to involve?

-Understanding other learning contexts – Agree on the target group for the work of the partnership; identify qualifications and programmes corresponding to the target group and use knowledge/skills and competence descriptors to understand learning outcomes in other contexts.

The Seminar in Berlin (19-20 October) will consequently focus on the topic of ‘conception of transferable units’:

-Design of units of learning outcomes;

-Allocation of ECVET points to qualifications and units.

In order to feed to the seminars, GHK will collect from the projects information about:

-Strategies/methods adopted or envisaged to complete the different stages;

-The advantages of these strategies/ methods;

-The challenges encountered;

These will be synthesised and presented in the background document for the seminar.

Concerning activities and presentation during the seminars, discussion during the Brussels event as well as the evaluation questionnaire revealed that:

-Main inputs should come from the pilot projects themselves even though a limited number of external inputs from relevant European or national experience were also mentioned as potential sources for discussion;

-These would be discussed in workshops paying particular attention to leaving enough time for exchange (possibly in even smaller groups than in Brussels);

-GHK would document the outcomes of these discussions in form of sheets that will each time present one approach/method as adopted by a specific project, its advantages and the challenges the project had to overcome.

Finally, the participants discussed the possibility of involving external stakeholders in the future seminars. There was an agreement that the discussion during these seminars should remain technical and concerned with sharing experience and identifying common tools. As the goal of these activities is testing ECVET, the ECVET principles and processes as agreed in the Recommendation should be taken forward as a common basis. The presence of external stakeholders who may be also associated partners in some projects will be discussed on case-by-case basis with the projects based in the country where a meeting will be organised.

Table 1 – Main stages of project work

Partnership /

• Design a network/ partnership that will enable credit transfer (involving the necessary competent institutions)

Understanding other learning contexts /

• Agree on the target group for the workof the partnership (based on either occupations, job profiles, working tasks)

• Identify qualifications and respective programmes in the countries that correspond to this target group

• Use knowledge/skills and competence descriptors to understand learning outcomes from another context/country.

Conception of transferable units /

• Design units of learning outcomes (these can be of different nature: shared references, common units, units open to mobility)

• Allocate ECVET points to qualifications and units

Partnership /

• Establish a Memorandum of Understanding

Conditions for credit transfer /

• Prepare the mobility phase (reflect on the relationship between units and the mobility phase, engagement of training centres or employers)

• Reflect and agree on assessment arrangements for the mobility phase.

• Reflect and agree on validation and recognition arrangements for the mobility phase.

Using credit transfer /

• Testing through mobility: Learning agreement with the learner

Evaluation/Impact /

• Analyse the implications for the existing national systems and structures

Annex A– additional project information

This information was collected based on the conversations and exchanges during the seminar.

Name / AEROVET
Target group / The target group for this project is apprentices. The idea is to send French apprentices to Germany (and German apprentices to France) and compare their achievements with those apprentices who did not take part in mobility. This approach is intended to allow for an assessment of the added value of mobility, and the differences between the French and German systems.
Main approach / The AEROVET project builds on the outcomes of the AERONET pilot project which looked at acquiring in-depth knowledge of qualification in four partner countries in the aeronautic sector. As part of the pilot project, a repertory of ‘typical professional tasks’ were identified. These tasks were found to be common to the work of all aircraft construction professional across Europe. The AEROVET project aims to further develop the repertory of tasks to now cover the profession of aircraft maintenance staff. On the basis of common tasks identified, learning outcomes and units of learning outcomes will be developed.
Rather than apply ECVET to the sector, one of the aims of this project is to explore if ECVET can depict common tasks/competencies in the full size of qualifications.
Type of institutions involved / There are six partners involved in this project from four countries (DE, FR, ES and UK). Government agencies along with Higher Education Institutions and Further Education Colleges are working together and will provide valuable insights into understanding the link between ECVET and ECTS
Quality and trust / Trust is an important feature of this project. In addition, procedures to support mobility must be reliable.
Name / ASSET
Target group / The project is focused on the automobile services sector. The project will test ECVET on a group of learners who will participate in a mobility exchange. In France, the target group will be young people in “formation alternée” (combination of school-based and on-the job training with a similar status to that of apprentices). The status of young people in other countries will be that of students or pupils. Learners will be trained at levels corresponding to levels 4 or 5 of the EQF.
Approach to design of units / The starting point is to identify job profiles and the main activities/tasks to ensure partners have a shared common understanding of the job. From here, units of learning outcomes open to mobility will then be identified. To determine what can constitute a coherent unit is considered to be relatively straight forward.
Once units are designed, they will be validated and recognized in the national system. The difficulty will be in terms of linking units to each of the four national systems (FR, UK, FI, RO) participating in this project.
There are various levels of trust: trust between providers on the ground (which exists in some instances due to previous mobility exchanges) and between competent institutions of different countries (this is considered to be more challenging).
Type of institutions involved / There are 11 partners from four countries (FR, HU, FI, RO). The project includes representation from Government agencies, education authorities, secondary technical school, enterprises, training provider, chamber of commerce.
In Hungary and Romania Ministerial institutions are participating in the project.
With respect to the diversity of national systems, this project will explore the potential to establish a common approach to defining a set of common units that will be open to mobility.
Formal/non-formal/informal learning / School based training. The project will also envisage mobility with on-the-job training periods.
Differences in qualifications in the partnership / In France the qualification chosen was not a Diploma of the National Education (as this was considered to be too broad) but rather, a sectoral qualification of the automobile services branch, which is narrower. It is easier to identify the core activities of the job. It is important that projects are clear on the job they focus on. In some systems qualifications may be defined in a rather broad manner (related to several professions) when identifying common learning outcomes with other countries this may be more challenging as in cases where qualifications are more narrow and linked to a single job profile. .
What can be the impact on existing national qualifications? / Even though the goal of the project is to use ECVET, based on the existing situations in the partner countries (regarding structure and content of qualifications as well as the requirements and conditions concerning assessment and validation), the competent institutions involved are aware of the fact that certain evolutions and changes may be required in the future if mobility is to be fully integrated into the training pathways.
Name / Be-Twin
Target group / The Be-Twin project is focused on three sectors (plastic industry, hospitality management and training of trainers). The project aims to test ECVET on qualifications at different EQF levels.

• Levels 4 and 5 – Plastic Industries (in France, between “Bac Pro” and BTS)
• Levels 5, 6 and 7 – Hospitality Management (equivalent of Foundation degree in the UK)
• Levels 6 and 7 – Training of trainers

Approach / The Be-Twin project aims to identify common denominators and a translation tool between ECTS and ECVET. As such, Be-Twin is in the process of developing a state of the art matrix linking training pathways and learning outcomes. The idea is that learning outcomes provide a common language that can be used to understand job profiles and qualifications. On this basis, learning outcomes are translated into learning pathways, then converting learning pathways into ECTS. Whilst the starting point is usually the curriculum, it is recognized that a common understanding of the curriculum exists in some sectors but not all. Initial work on developing the matrix has revealed some difficulties with allocating credit points.
As part of this project, a network of 42 universities (coordinated by UNICA) will explore the relationship between ECTS and ECVET. With regards to ECTS, there is ongoing work being carried out to define ECTS credit on basis of learning outcomes. One of the main differences is that ECTS considers the workload to calculate the number of points. In addition ECTS is based on learning pathways.
In France, the BTS qualification (tertiary VET qualification) was the starting point for the project as it is located between ECVET and ECTS. Here, BTS can be described as a higher education degree, based on on-the-job training and designed using the learning outcomes approach. It is translated in ECTS for the purpose of mobility and in order to receive financing for students.
Type of institutions involved / There are 15 partners involved in this project from eight countries (FR, UK, IT, BE, PL, HU, DE, EL). The partnership includes Ministries, Chambers, enterprises, government agencies, Higher Education Institutions, colleges and social partners from different countries.
Formal/non-formal/informal learning / At this stage, it is difficult to determine how the project will take informal and non-formal learning into consideration. However, in the first case study, French apprentices will undergo on-the-job training as well as school-based training. The idea is to test ECVET and ECTS in formal training and on- the-job training.
Differences in qualifications in the partnership / The project is based on previous work that has been carried out in the context of a Leonardo project (EuroPlastic) which focused on the construction of a common certificate in the field of industrial sciences and techniques.
In the hospitality management sector, the UK partner presented the Foundation Degree in Hospitality Management as a joint vocational/academic approach. The Chamber of Commerce located in Paris then tried to identify the qualification in the national register most suitable matched to the Foundation Degree curriculum proposed by the UK partner.
Learning outcomes and labour market needs / Where the project focuses on the plastic industry, training centres, employer representatives and federations are involved. This cooperation is intended to ensure a good match between the learning outcomes of qualifications and the needs of the labour market.
Name / Cape-SV
Target group / Individuals employed in the performing arts sector
Main approach / Cape-SV aims to define common learning outcomes for technicians and administrators. The common units of learning will be based on an analysis of existing qualifications. The EQF will be used to describe and translate competencies, knowledge and skills.
This project is concerned both with geographical mobility and personal achievement. In this context, personal achievement can be thought of in terms of new experiences and developing new skills and knowledge. As such, the project will also explore transferability of skills within the sector and across other sectors.
Type of institutions involved / There are seven partners involved in this project from five countries (FR, CZ, ES, IT, UK). Representatives from higher education institutions, colleges and public bodies are involved. A peer-review approach to assessment of units, involving the different institutions, forms a key feature of this project.
Name / CREDCHEM
Target group / The target group will be learners in initial training.
Approach / The design of units of learning outcomes will involve partners from participating countries to discuss and agree knowledge, skills and competencies with enterprises in order to verify their accuracy. Learning providers will then consider which units of learning outcomes can be delivered when and where (i.e. specific units delivered in a school or in an enterprise).
Part of the discussions involves a debate about how broad a unit needs to be. For example, in some countries mobility periods cover 6 weeks, in other countries this may be a longer or shorter period of time.