EQF Referencing Process
The EQF Referencing Process (EQF-Ref) - Examples and Proposals project being conducted under the EU Lifelong Learning Programme
The European Union adopted the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) in the spring of 2008 with the aim of fostering transparency in qualifications and permeability between the different education and employment systems in Europe. Many EU Member States are voluntarily implementing the EU's recommendation and are planning to reference their national qualifications system to the EQF by means of a national qualifications framework (NQF). Germany has developed the German Qualifications Framework (GQF) which is being tested this year.
The EQF-Ref project is being coordinated by the Austrian organization 3s research laboratory. BIBB is a partner of the EQF-Ref project, along with Bulgaria, Finland, The Netherlands and the Czech Republic. The EQF-Ref project builds on the findings from the TransEQFrame http://www.transeqframe.net/ project which BIBB coordinated from 1 January 2007 through 31 December 2008 with the same partners (with the exception of the Czech Republic).
The EQF-Ref project is examining the national qualifications systems of the partner countries, the methods used to develop national qualifications frameworks and how the EQF is being implementing in the participating partner countries. It will have an effect on the design of the national processes used to reference national qualifications to the EQF. For this reason, the project is aimed not only at public institutions and stakeholders which are involved in the process in the partner countries but also at political decision-makers at European level (in particular the members of the EU Advisory Group and the European Commission).
