ECVET (European Credit System for Vocational Education and Training European)

The transparency and recognition of skills and competences are fundamental to the professional and personal development of the individual, as well as to the competitiveness and employment on the European market.

Thus, ECVET aims to improve compatibility between different education and training systems in Europe and promotes:

• transnational mobility
• access to lifelong learning

ECVET also:

• improves the way the learning outcomes are understood, focusing on transparency, transnational mobility and their transferability between and within member states across different sectors of the economy;
• contributes to the development and extension of European cooperation in the fields of education and training;
• enables: mobility, comparison, compatibility, transparancy;
• implies the compliance of certain principles, rules and conventions, in a coherent and rational manner;
• aims to facilitate: the mobility of citizens engaged in the training process; a validation of lifelong learning outcomes; transparency of qualifications; mutual trust and cooperation between providers of education and training in Europe;
• completes the European initiatives, such as: European Qualifications Framework (EQF), European Quality Assurance Reference Framework (EQARF), EUROPASS, etc;
• is aligned with initiatives taken at European level, such as the one that involves the introduction of the European Qualifications Framework (EQF), aimed at increasing transparency of qualifications;
• proposes a common approach in describing qualifications, in order to make them easier to understand in the context of mobility or participation in lifelong learning.

What are the benefits of ECVET for mobility?

Learning outcomes acquired abroad may be taken into account for the purpose of acquiring a qualification in the participant's country of origin;

• It helps to improve access to qualifications for all citizens;
• It allows a common approach in describing qualifications, in order to make them easier to understand in the context of mobility from one training system to another and different procedures for validating learning outcomes from one country to another;
• Ensures the comparison of the learning outcomes acquired in different countries, their validation and recognition;
• Facilitates the transfer and validation of learning outcomes in non-formal and informal contexts.

Implementing resources

Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the establishment of a European Credit System for Vocational Education and Training (ECVET) 

Using ECVET for Geografical Mobility 

Useful links:

http://www.ecvet-toolkit.eu/ecvet-toolkit/ecvet-toolkit 
http://ec.europa.eu/education/policy/vocational-policy/ecvet_en