Women drawn to Europass scheme

Citation

(2002), "Women drawn to Europass scheme", Education + Training, Vol. 44 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2002.00444fab.008

Women drawn to Europass scheme

Women drawn to Europass scheme

More women than men are taking advantage of the EU's training-pathways scheme, according to a European Commission report. Designed to promote the mobility of people in training, improve employment prospects for young people and raise the quality and attractiveness of vocational education and training, the pathways enable people undergoing work-linked training, including apprenticeships, to do a period of training in another EU member state. A Europass training document certifies this pathway. Over the past two years, 20,000 Europass documents have been issued for training courses of between three and 15 weeks, mostly to people under the age of 23. "I note with interest that the majority of the young people who have obtained the Europass are young women," said Viviane Reding, European commissioner responsible for education and culture. "Doing part of your training in another country of Europe is increasingly considered to be an asset on the labour market. However, many young people experience difficulties when it comes to putting these periods of study or training to advantage. With Europass, the EU offers an instrument that helps people in work-linked training to present their European training pathway effectively. I welcome the success that this tool has encountered."

While periods of study or training in another member state as part of EU programmes such as Erasmus (higher education) or Leonardo (vocational training) are automatically recognized, this is not the case outside these programmes. It is therefore useful, in order to certify periods of training abroad, for people to have a document stating, in the various languages concerned, that they have followed a European training pathway, and describing this pathway. This is the aim of the Europass training document. In order to ensure the quality of the European training pathways, a partnership is concluded between sending and host organizations, setting out the content of the training, its duration and methods. A mentor is responsible for the person undergoing training in the host organization. These conditions must be met for a Europass document to be issued.

Europass documents, which have been in existence since 2000, have been awarded to almost 10,000 people in Germany, 3,000 in France, 2,000 in the United Kingdom, more than 1,000 people in Denmark and 1,000 in Austria. The main destination for these European training pathways is the UK, which is way ahead of Spain, Germany and France. The most popular occupations seem to be the hotel and restaurant trade and tourism. The report underlines that, while many small and medium-size firms have been involved as host bodies, few of them have taken part as bodies sending their apprentices. The Commission therefore encourages the member states, which have set up national contact points for the implementation of the European training pathways, to provide SMEs with more information on these pathways.

Detailed information and links with the national contact points may be found at http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/europass/index_en.html