NCP-VET-CO project – Cooperation network between NCPs (2009-2011)
Linking the national qualifications to the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) is a complicated and time-consuming process, which may be made more profound by sharing and exchanging experience between various countries. The cross-border collaboration is particularly important for the institutions, which are responsible for arranging the referencing in their countries.
To promote such international cooperation, in the terms of the Leonardo da Vinci Programme NCP-VET-CO project was launched in 2009 involving five partners from five countries:
- The Estonian Qualifications Authority (coordinator);
- The Finnish National Board of Education;
- National Institution of Technical and Vocational Education of the Czech Republic;
- Academic Information Centre of Latvia;
- The Romanian Institute of Educational Sciences.
All the participating organizations in their home countries act as actual or potential National Coordination Points (NCP) founded in line with the Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the European Council on the establishment of the European Qualifications Framework for lifelong learning (April 2008). Since February 2008, the Academic Information Centre has acted as the Latvian National Coordination Point.
The main goal of this project (2009- July 2011) was to develop an effective network among these five NCPs in Estonia, Latvia, Finland, the Czech Republic and Romania in order to assist the partners in organizing the referencing of the national qualifications to the EQF with a focus on vocational education qualifications, as well as to share best practises and discuss relevant challenges in the course of the process. Since the partner countries are at different stages of developing their national qualifications frameworks or systems and the referencing process was ongoing during the project, the experience gained could be used in practice providing a broader context for the national developments.
These five countries were selected to participate in this project due to two reasons:
- Significant workers’ and students’ mobility between Estonia, Latvia and Finland;
- Estonia, Latvia, Romania and the Czech Republic share a similar political and historical background.
The mentioned similarities serve as a basis for a good cooperation and better understanding of other partners’ qualifications systems.
The main activities of the project comprised five meetings each organized by one of the partners to exchange experience and have discussions on relevant issues. The topics of the meetings included:
- Current position and tasks of NCPs;
- Recognition of vocational education and professional qualifications;
- Latest developments related to the referencing process of the national qualifications to the EQF;
- Placement of vocational education qualifications in the national qualifications frameworks or systems and in the EQF;
- Level descriptors for qualifications based on competences or learning outcomes, the development process and methodology used;
- Description of the competences or learning outcomes;
- Assessment process in vocational education;
- Recognition of informal and non-formal learning;
- Quality assurance of vocational education – overview and examples of good practice;
- Guidance and counselling in vocational education.
The experts from other institutions were invited to the meetings in order to present some topics related to their expertise, which helped in finding out more specific information and getting to know more contacts from the partner countries.
Grounding on the knowledge obtained during the meetings the best practice guide outlining the experience of partner countries regarding referencing process was compiled.
More on the project and materials from the meetings are available at the project website.
Project flyer is here.
Source: AIC
