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Thierry Lefeuvre, ECVET Team
Customised seminar: ECVET
for the nuclear energy sector
The ECVET Team ran
around a dozen customised
seminars in 2012,
covering a wide range
of topics and formats.
Highlights included a
day-long seminar in
Paris attended by 130
representatives from
various economic sectors,
a three-day seminar
in Warsaw for the main
vocational education and
training actors, and a
two-day seminar for the
nuclear energy sector.
10 ECVET magazine n°12 / December 2012
The nuclear energy’s sector’s willingness
to rapidly implement ECVET for
its high-level qualifications (from Bachelor’s
to Ph.D. level) reflects the potential
benefits that the professional world can
take from this EU initiative.
This customised seminar requires some
clarifications
A customized seminar entitled “ECVET
for the nuclear energy’s sector” was
held in Brussels on 25–26 September
2012. The seminar was jointly developed
and facilitated by the requester
and ECVET Team. More precisely, it was
a work session organised on the Institute
for Energy and Transport’s initiative,
one of the seven institutes of the Joint
Research Centre (JRC) of the European
Commission. The IET’s role is to provide
scientific and technological input for the
design, development, and monitoring of
EU policies relating to energy. Being a
leader on energy security issues, the IET
aims at developing transparency of qualifications
in this field, in order to facilitate
professional mobility at European scale.
In his speech at the beginning of the
seminar, IET Director Georges Van
Goethem was very clear on his intents
in terms of qualifications: the idea is to
move from a theoretical knowledge process
to an approach focused on the
development of competences. In this
regard, he wishes to use ECVET and
available European tools to improve
qualifications transparency and staff
mobility.
In the field of nuclear security, issues
are complex and involve many stakeholders,
making discussions long and
arduous. Many EU member states
have developed specific qualifications,
which are overseen by national accreditation
organisations. Each country has
its own strong nuclear security culture
and cross-border cooperation is difficult.
In this context, ECVET represents
an opportunity to build bridges between
the different national certifications, and
could ultimately lead to mutual recognition.
17 people attended the seminar, all specialists
in radiation and nuclear security
and either high profile professors or
heads of European Qualifications Framework
Level 6 to Level 8 training programmes.
First, key ECVET concepts
and technical specifications were presented
to them. The participants, although
very familiar with ECTS but new
to ECVET, wished to discuss the following
points:
• The relationship between vocational
profile and certifications;