The SCQF Partnership is a valued member of the EQF Advisory Board and also sits on or is linked to many other international committees and initiatives involved in framework and lifelong learning development.
Qualifications Can Cross Boundaries
We work closely with the Qualifications Frameworks across the UK, and the Republic of Ireland to ensure there is a clear understanding of qualification developments and to promote transparency of the NQFs.
Annually we update the popular leaflet, Qualifications Can Cross Boundaries, which shows the relationship of each Framework to each other and reference the qualification levels to the EQF.
The European Qualifications Framework
The European Qualifications Framework for lifelong learning is an overarching qualifications framework which links different countries’ qualifications frameworks together. Acting as a translation device to make qualifications easier to understand across different countries and systems in Europe, its main aim is to help people moving from one country to another for work, or to continue their education or training.
Further information on the EQF is available at the Learning Opportunities and Qualifications in Europe Portal. This is a joint European Union Portal on learning opportunities and qualifications. It provides information on the EQF, NQFs and how they compare as well as information on qualifications in Europe with the facility to search by subject field, level of education or country.
The SCQF partnership is currently undertaking a project to update the original SCQF referencing report to the EQF. A Steering Group has been set up to provide guidance and consultation. Members include:
- College Development Network
- Universities Scotland
- Quality Assurance Agency Scotland
- SQA
- UK NARIC
- NUS
- Sparqs
- Scottish Union Learning
- Employers
- Education Scotland
- Scottish Government
- ECORYS
- Skills Development Scotland
- General Teaching Council for Scotland
- Scottish Training Federation
- ECVET Expert
- International Consultants
The updated report will be presented to the EQF Advisory Group in December 2018 and will be available here in 2019.
European Credit transfer system for VET (ECVET)
The European Credit system for Vocational Education and Training (ECVET) gives people greater control over their individual learning experiences and makes it more attractive to move between different countries and different learning environments.
The system aims to facilitate the validation, recognition and accumulation of work-related skills and knowledge acquired during a stay in another country or in different situations. It should ensure that these experiences contribute to vocational qualifications.
ECVET aims to create a technical framework to describe qualifications in terms of units of learning outcomes, and it includes assessment, transfer, accumulation and recognition procedures.
UK ECVET Experts promote and encourage organisations involved in mobility to use ECVET in geographical mobility, linking ECVET to Erasmus+. The SCQF Partnership is the National Contact Point for Scotland and has an ECVET expert on the team who works closely with the other experts and the UK National Agency for Erasmus+ on the implementation of ECVET.
Get more information on the work of the UK ECVET Experts, guidance, resource material and case studies.
European Vocational Education and Training VET initiatives
The UK Qualifications Frameworks have also worked together to produce a summary report on the current European Vocational Education and Training VET initiatives (ECVET, EQAVET, ESCO, EQF & Europass) and how these are being taken forward in the UK.
Skills for Europe Website
The Qualifications Frameworks across the UK have worked collaboratively to develop the Skills for Europe website, designed to help careers advisers, recruiters, university and college staff, learners and workers understand how skills and qualifications are recognised across Europe.
The European Inventory
The European Inventory is a regularly updated overview of validation practices across Europe. This inventory, compiled in cooperation with the European Commission, provides an overview of validation arrangements in European countries. In cooperation with the European Commission and Member States, CEDEFOP helps to develop validation systems by updating and hosting the inventory and further developing European guidelines on validation.
Funded Projects and Consultancy
The SCQF Partnership has an established European and International reputation working closely with number of member states on key projects funded by the European Commission through Erasmus+.
Recent and current projects
NQF-IN: Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme (Key Action 2: Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training) of the European Commission and led by the Educational Research Institute from Poland the NQF- project aimed to support to national governments, EU agencies and key stakeholders in developing policies on including non-formal VET qualification into NQFs.
D’Ahoy: The D'Ahoy project is an Erasmus+ KA2 Strategic Partnership to support Innovation. The project aims to investigate innovative educational ideas around Decision Making, with a view to developing a Decision Skills Framework that can be integrated into Higher Education and Vocational Education & Training.
