EU CREDCHEM Project pilots the European Credit System for Vocational Education and Training within the chemical sector
Marion Beyer
The CREDCHEM Project 1 is designing and piloting a credit system aimed at enhancing learner mobility within the chemical sector by testing the ECVET 2 Credit System developed by the European Commission and the member states. The objective of ECVET is to make it possible for learners to transfer learning outcomes acquired abroad or in another vocational training system to their own system, where such outcomes can be accumulated to gain a qualification. The aim is for this to serve as a vehicle for the fostering of lifelong learning and of mobility in pursuit of learning.
European Commission funded project partnerships and networks are currently ongoing at a European, national, regional, local and sectoral level in order to test the quality of the ECVET System.
The CREDCHEM Project began on 1 March 2009 and will run until 29 February 2012. It is being coordinated by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training and encompasses two further German partners as well as institutions from Bulgaria, Italy, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
The objectives of the CREDCHEM Project are as follows:
- defining units of learning outcomes which can be completed at CREDCHEM partner institutions and at companies abroad in order to facilitate the mobility of learners in the chemical sector;
- providing practical instruments in the form of the CREDCHEM learning units and implementation guides which can be used by companies and training institutions and be deployed within the various VET systems;
- establishing transparency and comparability of the results of laboratory and production based learning and training processes from the world of work irrespective of the system within which such results were achieved;
- complying with jointly agreed quality standards in the implementation of learning outcomes units.
The following project results are expected:
- the drawing up of a proposal for the description of learning outcomes in operational and laboratory occupations in the chemical industry, for the definition of learning units and for the provision of evidence of such learning units in the form of credit points;
- the development of procedures and instruments for the documentation and evidencing of learning outcomes in the host country and their validation in the home country;
- the use of mobility schemes as a vehicle for the piloting and testing of procedures and instruments which have been developed;
- the development of partnership agreements ("Memoranda of Understanding" - MoU) and of learning agreement templates.
More information on the project and on ten further projects piloting ECVET is available at: www.ecvet-projects.eu/.
