National educational systems, especially VET-systems, grew over dozens of years and are strongly influenced by the size and kind of industry sectors, division of labour, educational resp. pedagogic beliefs, involvement of stakeholders, approaches of social partnerships, etc. (Biernacki 1975, Greinert 2006). Nowadays at least 3 main different strands of VET-regimes are established in European countries:

* School-based VET-systems, aiming at full qualifications with nationwide curricula, like in France, many Central and East European (CEE) countries, in the south of Europe or the Nordic countries.

* Dual systems, aiming at full qualifications with nationwide curricula, predominant in Germany, Austria and Switzerland but also existing in neighboring countries like (north)-Italy, Denmark or Belgium.

* Unit-based systems, where each training provider may choose what and how many units he trains. The units are accredited nationwide – the resulting qualifications not necessarily. This approach is predominant in the UK:

The symposium won’t tackle the advantages or disadvantages of these different VET-regimes once again, but will focus on a common challenge, the increasing amount of regulations or certificates issued by transnational organizations.

We’ll focus on three transnational regulations with serious impact on national VET-systems, two of them already implemented and mandatory for chosen qualifications (European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) modules for maintenance staff on civil airports and International Maritime Organisation (IMO) standards for seafarers); the third, due to the principle of subsidiarity, is voluntarily but affecting all qualifications (European Parliament and Council recommendation on the establishment of a European Credit System for Vocational Education and Training (ECVET)).

All regulations tackle the structure of national qualifications in terms of implementing units, on how to document Learning Outcomes (LO) resp. inputs or assessment; the first two contain additionally the content of units; “what” should be taught.

Research (Saniter 2011, MariePRO 2015) revealed that the content formulated by EASA resp. IMO is mainly already part of the curricula of the respective national qualifications, only minor adaptations were needed.

But the structures foreseen by the regulations rose partly enormous challenges for the national VET-systems, the first presentation will focus on the special circumstances in dual systems with holistic assessments when implementing the EASA modules. Mandatory standards from transnational bodies are minimum standards; the second presentation focuses on the risk of lowering national standards in a sector with high transnational competiveness, seafaring.  

The third presentation will focus on “lessons learnt” in these two sectors for the further development of ECVET.

Biernacki, R. (1975): The Fabrication of Labour. Germany and Britain, 1640-1914. Berkley-Los Angeles-Oxford, California University Press. Greinert, W.-D. (2006): Geschichte der Berufsausbildung in Deutschland. In: Arnold/Lipsmeier (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Berufsbildung, 2. Auflage, Wiesbaden 2006, 499-508. MariePRO (2015): MariePRO Working Paper 1 (in preparation). Saniter, A. (2011): AEROVET: Innere Flexibilität der Ausbildungsberufe anstelle fragmentierter Modularisierung. In: Eberhard, C. (Hrsg.): Mit ECVET zu besserer Mobilität? Von der Europäischen Empfehlung zur Erprobung in der Praxis (S. 20–29). Bonn: Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung (BIBB).