The Malta Qualifications Council of the Education, Youth and Employment Ministry is among 12 other chosen centres in the European Union which will test the European Qualifications Framework for Lifelong Learning.

Following a call for proposals by the commission in June last year, under the second phase of the Leonardo da Vinci programme, MQC has been awarded a grant to coordinate a project leading to the alignment of existing qualifications in tourism studies to the European Qualifications Framework.

The award is for action to develop and test the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) including national and sectoral qualifications. Malta will be working with five other partner countries, namely Austria, Greece, Italy, Slovenia and Spain. This is the first time that MQC has been awarded such a substantial project by the European Union. The eligible countries for this award were all member states of the union together with EFTA and EEA countries, the then candidate countries Bulgaria and Romania, and Turkey. Malta was granted the maximum grant available under this call. Other centres which will test and develop the EQF are from France, Romania, Germany Austria, Hungary, Sweden as well as non-governmental organisations such as the European Metal Union and the National Union of Students of Europe.

The aim of the MQC project, entitled EQF-FRAME (Flexible Reference and Methods of Evaluation) is to develop and test the EQF against existing qualifications in the tourism sector which is vital for the prosperity and the development of the union itself. The specific objectives of the project are:

a) to look into existing vocational and education and training (VET) qualifications in tourism studies in the partner countries and prepare a comparative study of such qualifications including level descriptors, course programmes, quality assurance policies and assessment procedures,

b) to analyse such qualifications from the EQF level descriptors’ points of view and in terms of the knowledge, skills and competence required,

c) to identify and develop specific learning outcomes for all programmes of studies and of course descriptors pegged to EQF level descriptors,

d) to identify and design learning pathways in tourism studies from compulsory education and into higher education,

e) to prepare a manual, which can be used across other sectors of qualifications, for relating existing VET qualifications to the EQF, for the use of educational planners, teachers and policy-makers, and,

f) to develop an interactive description of the EQF for all stakeholders involved in VET qualifications as background information.

Both the Institute of Tourism Studies and the Malta Tourism Authority have been invited to be actively involved in this project which starts later this year and which will end with an international seminar in Malta in autumn 2008.