The ECVET STEP project addresses the fundamental goal of the Education and Training 2020 Work Programme: “Making lifelong learning and mobility a reality” for reinforcing VET, with a focus on work-based training and apprenticeships. ECVET STEP focuses on the development of an ECVET Capability Maturity Framework (CMF), which will allow VET-related organisations and individual actors across Europe, starting from the agricultural domain but ranging to other domains and sectors, to understand and reap the benefits of ECVET from their perspective, as well as to track their performance and to assure and control the quality of the integration of the ECVET system into their existing processes and workflows.

WEBSITE: ECVET-STEP

PARTNERS
GR: Technological Educational Institute of Athens – DE: University of Duisburg-Essen -ES. Universidad de Alcala -BE: Eummena – NL AOC Raad -CZ: Ústav zemědělské ekonomiky a informací – SI- Kmetijsko gozdarska zbornica Slovenije – ES: CMMP-Instituto Nevares de Empresarios Agrarios (ES)

PROJECT STATUS: Finished

FOCUS AND OBJECTIVES
In essence, ECVET STEP will support organisations to follow a step-wise, quality-controlled approach in adopting ECVET. In order to further facilitate organisations to “take the ECVET STEP” the project shall build upon a design patterns approach, developing shareable and reusable units of learning outcomes (RULOs). Last but not least, the ECVET CMF and the RULO methodology will incorporate an ECVET Quality Assurance Specification that shall define quality criteria for the application of ECVET to sectoral and trans-sectoral qualifications and other VET-related instruments involved in the ECVET processes and workflows. This specification will allow for continuous and predictable quality improvement, thus allowing organisations engaged in learner mobility in VET to follow an evolutionary path from ad hoc, inconsistently performed practices, to a mature, disciplined and continuously improving implementation of ECVET.

In essence, the ECVET STEP instruments will form a solid foundation for the development of transparent and comparable descriptions not only of lifelong learners’ achievements (qualifications as well as learning outcomes) but also of their goals, of VET and employment opportunities, as well as of recruitment needs in the agriculture and other sectors. It will contribute to making definitions of learning outcomes reusable and accessible across learning and recruitment information systems, thus facilitating the development of IT tools and services related to the generation of personal profiles, achieved learning outcomes and competences, etc. The outcomes of this effort will facilitate the bond for the actual building of effective pathways between training and employment through technology based solutions and services.

BLANKCON & ECVET-STEP
Hans Blankestijn was involved in the development of ECVET from the start. He is a expert member of the Dutch National Group for ECVET and as such available for advise and training on ECVET.