EQF-Ref - launched with BIBB participation
New EU project - EQF Referencing Process (EQF-Ref) - Examples and Proposals - launched on 1 February 2009 with BIBB participation
Marion Beyer
The European Union adopted the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) in the spring of 2008 with the aim of fostering greater transparency in qualifications and permeability between the different education and employment systems in Europe. The European Commission is supporting project partnerships with the aim of developing transparent procedures and methods for referencing national qualification levels to the EQF.
The EQF-Ref project began on 1 February 2009 and will run until 31 January 2011. It is being coordinated by the Austrian organization 3s Unternehmensberatung GmbH. BIBB - along with institutes from Bulgaria, Finland, The Netherlands and the Czech Republic - is a partner of the EQF-Ref project.
The EQF-Ref project has the task of considering and evaluating the criteria and methods that the EQF Advisory Group developed for referencing national qualification levels to the EQF. At national level, the authorities responsible for the respective qualifications will decide on how their qualification levels are to be referenced to the EQF.
EU Member States should discuss their experiences and exchange information on them with one another in order to develop mutual trust in the referencing process. With this in mind, the EQF-Ref project aims to facilitate communication between partner countries, foster learning from one another and develop mutual trust.
The most important results that will be generated by the EQF-Ref project are:
- National case studies which will describe the steps and methods that the partner countries are planning or have already undertaken for referencing national qualification levels to the EQF.
- A comparative evaluation report which will identify the commonalities and differences in the partner countries' planned or decided approaches, assess the national case studies on the basis of the criteria developed by the EQF Advisory Group and evaluate these criteria.
- A proposal for the structure of the 'referencing report': This proposal will be based on the criteria developed by the EQF Advisory Group. It will contain descriptive examples from the partner countries (regarding for example the type and scope of the documentation that is to be included) and recommendations on how a peer review between participating countries could be organized in order to 'evaluate' the how qualifications have been referenced to the EQF. A draft of the proposal will be presented and discussed at an international experts seminar.
The EQF-Ref project will take into account the partner countries' national qualification systems and their processes for developing a national qualifications framework and implementing the EQF. This project is intended to influence the design of the EQF referencing process at national level. For this reason its target group includes not only public institutions and players who are involved in this process in the partner countries but also political decision-makers at European level (particularly the members of the EQF Advisory Group, the European Commission and the National Coordination Points in other countries).
Further information is available at the EQF-Ref project website: www.eqf-ref.eu .
Information on the EQF is available on the website of the European Commission at: http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-policy/doc44_en.htm
