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Links with the National Educational Frameworks for qualification
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What is the EQF (European Qualification Framework)?
Europe has created the EQF to make qualifications across Europe easier to understand between different countries. This is because the European Union wants to promote Europe as an area of freedom security and justice, and recognizing the different educational frameworks contributes to achieve this objective. There are 39 countries involved in this implementation which contributes to foster coordination between countries in relation to educational purposes and a lot of comparative studies have been made to achieve excellence and apply this system in every country willing to participate and implement it.
The European Qualification Framework can be simply defined as a “bridge” between national qualification frameworks. The EQF is organised in 8 different levels described using learning outcomes. Each country develops National Qualification Frameworks (NQF) in order to develop the EQF. There is a platform: (link) https://ec.europa.eu/ploteus/en/compare, where you can check how countries have applied the EQF in their NQF.
The Ministers of Higher Education agreed that the EQF should be divided in 8 different cycles using a generic statement that acts as a descriptor with the typical expectations linked to this cycle and the abilities that are expected to be acquired by the learner at the end of that cycle. Each level has different parts: knowledge, skills, responsability and autonomy.
About non-formal and informal validation around Europe
In Europe, there was a first step, that recognised that adults could learn throughout all stages of their lives. These new approaches to consider learning led to the creation of new methodologies. A new system to identify, document, assess and certify these competences acquired through what is called non-formal learning was needed. Taking this into account, the different countries and cultures of the European Union started to develop these methodologies to validate informal learning. However, in this process, the European authorities realised that there was a problem: the approaches where too different from one country to another. The European Union decided to create what is called as the European Inventory. This is a tool that collects quality information and validation of good practices from the countries of the EU. This inventory has been updated 6 times, being the first one published in 2005 and the most recent in 2018. The validation process has increased in importance in terms of policies and institutional commitment, and nowadays, the validation of non-formal and informal learning has an important role in terms of helping to increase employability and mobility. Informal learning is also a useful tool to encourage and foster motivation for lifelong and continuous learning, especially for adults and individuals that do not have access to education because are living a difficult situation.
The European Qualification Framework nº 8 is responsible for the lifelong learning process and supports the non-formal approach in learning. It gives importance to the fact that qualification should be organised and described following specific learning outcomes.
According to the European inventory on validation of non-formal learning, there is a link between the type of validation (EQF) and the National Qualification Framework (NQF). This is necessary to improve transparency of learning systems. All countries present in the European Inventory, except Spain, have referenced the NQF to the EQF. Maybe you can understand it better with this example:
Imagine you are an individual from Poland who wants to work in Spain because you have moved to this country. Sadly, there are no available options for you to validate your skills and competences into a qualification recognised in the Spanish NQF. The objective of the EQF in relation to the NQFs is to make sure that this Polish individual, could have access to a suitable validation opportunity linked to his/her Polish NQF, and then have those skills recognised in the Spanish NQF thank you to the link between the Spanish NQF and the Polish NQF through the European Qualification Framework (EQF).