The European Qualifications Framework for lifelong learning (EQF) provides a common reference framework which assists in comparing the national qualifications systems, frameworks and their levels. It serves as a translation device to make qualifications more readable and understandable across different countries and systems in Europe, and thus promote lifelong and life-wide learning, and the mobility of European citizens whether for studying or working abroad.
In order to make the EQF work, European countries participating in "Education and Training 2020" are invited to relate their national qualifications levels to the appropriate levels of the EQF and to indicate in all new qualification certificates, diplomas and Europass documents the relevant EQF level.
The EQF portal provides the results of the national process for relating national qualifications levels to the levels of the EQF. In "Compare Qualifications Frameworks" page, it is possible to compare how national qualifications levels of countries that have already finalised their referencing process are been linked to the EQF.
The EQF portal further presents information "About the EQF" implementation, "Key Terms" that are agreed by all countries participating in the EQF and are essential to take into account when cooperating with stakeholders at national and international level in implementing the EQF. The EQF portal also seeks to gather relevant "Documentation" - legal text of the recommendation on the establishment of the EQF, other key policy documents and EQF notes and "Useful links" leads to other information sources that may prove useful for the comparability of qualifications. It is also possible to read and subscribe for the various issues of the "EQF Newsletter" through the EQF portal.

What is it about?
When moving to a new job or to further learning, whether within or across borders, learners and workers should see their skills and qualifications quickly and easily recognised. This is essential to raise skill levels and increase employability. The European Union has developed several instruments to support the transparency and recognition of knowledge, skills, and competences to make it easier to study and work anywhere in Europe.
What has been done so far?
To date, a variety of initiatives have been launched with a view to simplifying the transparency and recognition of skills and qualifications across Europe. These include:

• The European Qualifications Framework (EQF) helps in comparing national qualifications systems, frameworks and their levels to make qualifications more readable and understandable across different countries and systems in Europe.
• Validation of non-formal and informal learning is a way to recognise the full range of an individual’s knowledge, skills and competences, regardless if acquired within or outside the formal education system. If validated (identified, documented, assessed, and/or certified) these learning experiences can be made more visible and usable for further studies or work. Member States are invited to put the necessary arrangements for validation in place by 2018. Guidelines for implementation of these arrangements in the Member States are being developed. A European Inventory is updated on a regular basis to provide an overview over good practices in the area of validation.
• Europass , a set of five standardised documents and a skills passport available for free in 26 languages, designed to enable users to present their skills, qualifications and experience across Europe.
• Credit systems, ECTS for higher education and ECVET for vocational education and training.
• Quality assurance arrangements in higher education and vocational education and training.

What is next?
The European Commission is collecting the views of stakeholders through the online public consultation on the "European Area of Skills and Qualifications” . The consultation concerns the problems faced by Europeans with regard to the transparency and recognition of their skills and qualifications when moving within and between EU Member States, on the adequacy of the related European policies and instruments, and on the potential benefits of developing a “European Area for Skills and Qualifications”. See more...

What is ESCO?
ESCO is the multilingual classification of European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations. It identifies and categorises skills and competences, qualifications and occupations relevant for the EU labour market and education and training, in 22 European languages. The system provides occupational profiles showing the relationships between occupations, skills, competences and qualifications. ESCO has been developed in an open IT format and is available for everyone to use free of charge.
What is the added value of ESCO?
To help bridging the gap between the world of education and training and the labour market, the European Commission is developing ESCO. By introducing a standard terminology for occupations, skills, competences and qualifications ESCO can help education and training systems and the labour market to better identify and manage availability of required skills, competences and qualifications. Its multilingual character facilitates increased international transparency and cooperation in the area of skills and qualifications.
What can ESCO do?

How does ESCO support other European initiatives?
ESCO supports initiatives developed by the European Commission aimed at making labour market and education systems more transparent, stimulating mobility and creating opportunities.

• EURES, the European Job Mobility Portal
  This online portal allows public employment services to share their vacancies at a European level and reach out to workers beyond national borders.
• Erasmus+
  The Erasmus + programme enables (young) Europeans to study in another Member State and bring new skills and competences back to their country of origin.
• The European Qualifications Framework (EQF)
  The EQF aims to increase the comparability of levels of qualifications across borders.
• Europass CV
  This multilingual tool provides a European template for the description of the holder's skills and competences and qualifications.

How can ESCO enhance online job matching?
Job matching is increasingly carried out on the web, allowing for a more efficient approach. Not only does online job matching provide job seekers with a wide range of relevant opportunities, it also helps employees to identify new career paths and show what transferable skills they have between occupations.
Job matching based on skills and competences
Extracting the relevant information from online job vacancies and CVs is only the first step. For successful job matching based on skills and competences, it is also necessary to analyse and interpret this information correctly. ESCO's structure of three interlinked pillars can help IT systems achieve this. ESCO will enable IT systems to transform a jobseeker's work experience and qualifications into a likely set of skills and competences. This way ESCO helps create a more precise picture of the skills and competences of a person that could be used directly for job matching. Based on these conclusions, the IT system can more accurately and transparently match jobseekers to job vacancies or employers to potential recruits.
Enabling mobility
To employ the best person for the job regardless of where they are from, employers need to call on a wider pool of candidates. The EURES Job Mobility Portal is a key tool in enabling this. It hosts more than one million job vacancies from all over Europe, almost as many CVs, and thousands of registered employers. It helps those who wish to find a job abroad and offers European employers a variety of services and information covering every aspect of recruiting from other European countries. Using ESCO to improve semantic interoperability will allow EURES' services to be fine-tuned, making them more relevant to the current demands of the labour market. By highlighting mismatches between CVs and vacancies, ESCO can help identify skill gaps and learning/training opportunities.
How will ESCO support education and training?
ESCO, as a standardised terminology, will make it easier to describe how occupations, skills, competences and qualifications are linked and interact with each other. The 22 languages of ESCO will facilitate cooperation between countries and will support the mobility of learners between countries and systems. ESCO developments reflect the on-going shift to learning outcomes currently taking place across Europe. The learning outcomes approach states what a jobseeker knows, understands and is able to do on completion of a learning process. It offers an alternative to the traditionally strong emphasis on learning inputs (where a qualification is judged according to time spent in education, subjects studied and the location of the learning). These learning outcomes are commonly defined in terms of knowledge, skills and competences, thus sharing the basic terminological principles underpinning ESCO. This shared terminological core will facilitate the dialogue between labour market and education and training stakeholders. The introduction of the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) has been a trigger for a shift to learning outcomes. The linking of national qualifications frameworks (NQF) to the EQF is expected to be completed by 2014, thus signalling that the learning outcomes approach has been broadly accepted as the basis for future European cooperation in the area of education and training. ESCO will complement the EQF and be fully compatible with it.
How can I get involved?
Shaping ESCO into an up-to-date, practical tool can only be done from the bottom up, through the active involvement of people from the education and training sector as well as from the labour market. Feeding into the development of classifications are: employers' organisations; trade unions; employment services; education institutions; training organisations; European sector skills councils and networks as well as government bodies.
DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion and DG Education and Culture – supported by the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) – jointly coordinate the development of ESCO. They currently support the development of ESCO through the ESCO Secretariat which is responsible for the daily management and technical implementation of the project.
ESCO is managed and supported by several bodies:

What is it about?
The labour market is constantly evolving. Skills, competences, and qualifications that people need change over time. To deal with these changes people need to be equipped with a variety of basic skills, including literacy, numeracy, foreign languages , science and digital skills. Transversal skills, such as the ability to learn and initiative-taking, will help people deal with today's varied and unpredictable career paths. Entrepreneurial skills will help contribute to employability of young people in particular, as well as supporting new business creation. Furthermore it is important to better identify and manage the availability of required skills, competences, and qualifications, and to help preventing skills gaps and mismatches. Effective communication between the labour market and the education and training sector is vital.
What has been done so far?
European initiatives for developing skills:

What is it about?
Education and training are crucial for both economic and social progress, and aligning skills with labour market needs plays a key role in this. By the same token, under its Europe 2020 strategy to respond to the economic crisis, the EU set targets to bring the number of early school-leavers down to below 10% and increase the share of graduates from tertiary education to at least 40% by 2020.
Why is it needed?
In an increasingly globalised and knowledge-based economy, Europe is in need of a well-skilled workforce to compete in terms of productivity, quality, and innovation. Recent evidence, however, suggests that 20% of the EU working age population has low literacy and numeracy skills. This adds to the growing mismatch between the skills people acquire and what is demanded on the labour market. These factors contribute to unemployment and limit growth. Education and training also bolster the personal development and active citizenship and promote equity, social inclusion and cohesion.
How does it work?
While the responsibility for education and training systems lies with the Member States, the EU has a key role in supporting and supplementing efforts to improve and modernise their education systems. The objectives, instruments and arrangements for joint work at EU-level are outlined in the strategic framework, referred to as ET 2020. This framework is valid until 2020. Within this framework, priority areas are identified to plan activities over "work cycles " of three years each. Progress is monitored with the help of indicators and against a set of benchmarks, designed to contribute to evidence-based policy making and identifying challenges. Under the Europe 2020 Strategy , Member States are given specific guidance on priority reforms each year ("Country-specific recommendations").
What does it involve?
In order to ensure the successful implementation of ET2020, the EU relies on Working Groups composed of experts nominated by Member States and other key stakeholders. This work is part of a broader cooperation, known as the Open Method of Coordination, which aims to promote mutual learning, exchange of good practices, fostering national reforms and developing EU-level tools. The EU also carries out country analyses to support Member States in the development of their education and training policy. These respond to challenges that are identified at EU, national, and regional level, and aim to support mutual learning, exchange of best practices, identifying investment needs and assessing progress. The EU also promotes numerous consultation and cooperation activities involving stakeholders such as learning providers, civil society, businesses, and social partner organisations. The Education, Training, and Youth Forum is the annual platform for exchanges of views between the various stakeholders in education, training and youth .
What are the next steps?
In 2014-2020, EU Member States can use the opportunities available through the Erasmus+ programme and the European Structural and Investment Funds to improve the performance of their education and training systems. See more...

What is the Directorate General for Education and Culture?
The Directorate General for Education and Culture, or DG EAC, is the branch of the European Commission charged with Education, Training, Youth , Sport , Languages , and Culture . Its activities, as concerns education and training, are framed by the Education and Training 2020 strategy (ET2020), a part of the Europe 2020 strategy , designed to promote growth and jobs in Europe, as well as contributing to the development of skills for the labour market.
What does it do?
In the field of education and training, DG EAC, is responsible for the development of evidence-based policy and the management of initiatives in support of education and training across Europe, most notably the Erasmus+ programme . As the executive arm of the European Union, the European Commission is held accountable to the European Parliament, namely, in the case of DG EAC, the Education and Culture Committee .
What are its responsibilities?
The main responsibility of DG EAC in the field of education and training policy is to support Member States in developing coherent policies for:

Si le dispositif peut être amélioré, l'alternance est très appréciée des étudiants, des diplômes et des entreprises, révèle l'enquête "Quel avenir pour l'alternance en France", réalisée par l'agence Noir sur Blanc pour l'EM Normandie. Cette étude révèle en effet que l'alternance facilite l'insertion professionnelle, booste le salaire des jeunes diplômés recrutés, et permet aux entreprises de former de futurs salariés.
Quel avenir pour l'alternance en France ? Il est bien délicat de répondre à cette question car, si cette formule fonctionne particulièrement bien, y compris en période de crise, elle connaît un relatif coup de frein depuis un certain temps. Suite...

L’Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) annonce le lancement officiel d’un cours en ligne massif et gratuit, dont l’objectif est de former des personnes capables de développer une application de qualité professionnelle sur iOs.
Les universités françaises n’hésitent plus désormais à se lancer dans les cours en ligne massifs et gratuits. Nouvelle preuve en est : l’Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) vient de se lancer dans l’aventure, avec un MOOC relatif à la "Programmation sur iPhone et iPad". Suite...

L'Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne annonce le lancement imminent de son premier cours en ligne massif et gratuit relatif au droit des entreprises. Ce MOOC vise à donner une connaissance des règles juridiques relatives à la constitution et au fonctionnement des sociétés ainsi qu'à leur application.
J-2 avant le lancement, par l'Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, de son premier MOOC sur la plateforme France Université Numérique (FUN). Un cours en ligne gratuit et massif relatif au droit des entreprises, mais qui pourra être exploité par des communautés d'apprenants de tous les pays francophones. Suite...

Le 41ème Colloque annuel organisé par la Conférence des Directeurs de Services Universitaires de Formation Continue aura lieu du 11 au 13 juin 2014.
Si la mission Formation Continue des Universités n'est pas nouvelle, le contexte économique difficile et le vote récent des lois relatives à l'enseignement supérieur et à la formation professionnelle nous interrogent sur le chemin à emprunter afin que nos universités deviennent de véritables établissements d'apprentissage et de formation tout au long de la vie. Notre colloque 2014, qui réunira lors de la séance inaugurale nos collègues de la COURROIE, vise à partager cette réflexion avec de nombreux intervenants, partenaires sociaux, élus, chercheurs, universitaires et à poser les grands principes qui permettront aux Universités d'être demain en capacité de répondre aux espoirs et aux besoins suscités par l'inscription dans la loi ESR de la mission FTLV.
Plus d'informations (inscription, tarif, hébergement...) : ici.
Voir sur le blog le tag FCU.
Voir aussi sur le blog: La Formation Tout au Long de la Vie, une nouvelle dynamique pour l’université, 40 ans de formation professionnelle continue, 10 ans de VAE, Les colloques de la fcu: de 1972 à nos jours, Faire de l'Enseignement supérieur un outil performant de la FTLV, Nouvel environnement pour la formation continue en France et en Europe, 38ème Colloque National de la Conférence des Directeurs de Service Universitaire de Formation Continue, "Nouvel environnement pour la formation continue en France et en Europe", COLLOQUE FCU 2009, Les 6 et 7 juin 1996, la FCU tenait son colloque annuel à l'Université de Provence, Colloque National de la Conférence des Directeurs de Service Universitaire de Formation Continue : 11, 12 et 13 Juin 2008 à Toulouse.