EU strongly supports mobility for both goods and persons. This is also the case for apprentices who want to be trained abroad, outside of their home country.
For many years, this process has been hindered. The reason for this is that was very difficult for apprentices to get accreditation for what they learned abroad.
Hence, the number of apprentices trained outside their own country has for many years been low compared to other EU mobility programs.
Credit system
For this reason, the EU Member States and the Commission are developing a system to facilitate the recognition of knowledge, skills and competencies, gained by individuals in different learning environments or through periods of vocational education and training abroad.
The European Credit system for Vocational Education and Training (ECVET) will give people greater control over their individual learning experiences.
In addition, it will make it more attractive to move between different countries and different learning environments.
Lifelong Learning
Lifelong learning and mobility for learning are taking place increasingly in a wide variety of contexts; formal, non-formal and informal and in different countries.
One of the key solutions to attracting more interest in trans-national mobility is to facilitate validation, recognition and accumulation of learning outcomes acquired during a stay in another country or in different learning contexts.
See also module 10!
Comparability
ECVET aims for better comparability and compatibility between different national VET and qualification systems. The system, which should be implemented by Member States by 2012, is a voluntary framework to describe qualifications in terms of units of learning outcomes.
Each of these units will be associated with a certain number of ECVET points developed on the basis of common European standards. 60 points should correspond to the learning outcomes achieved in a year of full time VET.
More information: www.ec.europa.eu/education
You can also find plenty of useful information about mobility and accreditation. E.g. European credit and transfer and accumulation system (ECTS) and Europass.
Download templates for the Europass here.