Just when Europe is, for the first time, about to equip itself with a constitution, the field of Professional Training also begins to take shape.

 

Similarly to Erasmus programs which allow students to manage their university career in other countries, thus facilitating their mobility and establishing consistency between courses via the LMD (Licence-Master-Doctorat) system, employee mobility is developing thanks to the implementation of European systems of reference for job skills.

 

In this respect, it should be remembered that life-long learning is a European priority that was sanctioned in Lisbon in 2000. Thus, the program Leonardo da Vinci aims to finance founding, innovative projects in order to lay claim to this priority. But bearing in mind the number of involved parties (professional branches, chambers of commerce or work, social partners, businesses, regions, states), and the variety of systems and learning cultures, getting everything into harmony is not a particularly quick process.

 

This is why the 2E2F agency's initiative is to be welcomed (Europe Education – Formation France), which launched the first 'Forum Français' for engineering training projects in Europe, developed and financed by the Leonardo program. Within this framework, systems which were implemented by the Copenhagen process in 2002, were activated. They aim to improve access to professional training, notably thanks to the creation of the ECVET (European Credit for Vocational Education and Training). It's also hope that it will give consistency between professional European qualifications so as to make them more understandable and to allow for a larger university degree mobility within the EU.

 

This first forum presented well-grounded examples of harmonisation within the following themes:
 
1. Construct skills and certification standards of professional profiles common to several countries

For example, for the plastics processing sector, a Europlastic BTS (vocational training certificate) was put together by France (Fédération de la Plasturgie), Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, Greece, Poland and Spain. For transportation and logistics, a professional communal training career path known as Euro Trans Log. Other initiatives have been presented on international commerce and management in PME-PMI's (SMEs-SMIs) with Agefos PME Ile-de-France.

 

2. Accompany those going through a transition by securing professional career paths and validating experience

This was realised for home-help professions, with experience validation using the Competences + tool, developed jointly by 10 operators in Belgium, Italy and France. The same approach was carried out for stage professions in Italy, Austria and Holland with the Portolano tool, (skills portfolio) and those of interim work with the Tec Tonic project in France, Romania and Italy.

 

For building professions, a tutor standard has just been adopted by Belgium, Italy, Poland, Germany, Sweden and France Janus, an educational tool kit used to evaluate and prepare the teacher for his students, was developed by France, Poland, Belgium and Greece. Common processes were finalised to make the PME's aware of their social responsibility and of the equality of opportunities via distance-learning training systems coordinated by Agefos PME Ile-de-France, including together the Italians, Belgians, Spanish and Portuguese.

 

The Golden Goal Plus project designed by Germany, Poland, France, Austria, The Netherlands and Portugal, allows teachers to integrate sport into their training techniques of basic skills (communication, expression, behaviour).

 

5. Ensure quality in the training domain (evaluating and creating indicators)

Several projects have been developed, such as Peer Review, involving the Czech Rep, Finland, Spain, the UK, Portugal, Denmark and Austria, and DROA (Quality improvement in careers guidance) et AQOR (networks development for active careers guidance) projects concerning the evaluation of life-long systems and careers guidance practices concerning France, Spain, Italy and Poland.

 

Each of these elements (establishing standards common to a particular profession, skills validation, professional teacher improvement, researching key and transversal skills and the measuring of the quality of performances) have simultaneously been subject to a European consideration shared by several countries and, more often than not, instrumentation.

 

All of these concerns, often mentioned in my blog, are constitutive to our profession in a European framework.

 

Professional, life-long training is currently under way in Europe; it is going to accompany business development and people mobility, who will thus be able to train in one country and work in another. Professional skills and their validation will be given consistency. Broadcasting operational knowledge, as well as its teaching methods, its rules, its fantastic innovative force which creates collective wealth and its personal fulfilling power, go beyond national boarders to follow economic development of the European single market. This is only made possible thanks to the collaboration of all people involved in training and this forum pays homage to them.

 

The words of Hélène Clark, director of “policies in favour of life-long learning”, at the European Commission's General Management for Education and Culture, lay witness to the European political desire to bring this work to fruition, but also to emphasise all achievements. Upon concluding this new forum, she praised “transversal skills and general training allowing for a better return to a period of transformation of professions and knowledge such as what we are going through at the moment”.

 

So, the field of operational knowledge now contributes to form the Europe of tomorrow.