Validation of Competences of Adult Educators

All European member states are requested to have in place arrangements for the validation of non-formal and informal learning, including specific elements and following some particular principles described in the European Guidelines for Validating non formal and informal learning by CEDEFOP (CEDEFOP 2015).In some countries of the partners, there exist already systems of validation prior learning; some have gained experiences with validation through projects but have not set a system in place so far. It is a fact that adult education providers play a major role in it, because they are often the implementing bodies of the validation systems.In the partnership, we exchanged experiences and compared validation systems, which have been developed and/or have been implemented. We focused on how validation systems have been developed, how they met the requirements of the CEDEFOP guidelines and what role adult education played in the system. Furthermore, we analysed strong and weak points during the implementation process.Concrete aims were:- Identification and comparison of different systems of validation and the involved stakeholders, the political embedding, financing, business models, framework requirements and validation instruments.- Identification and comparison of the role of adult education in implementation, realization and provision of validation systems including an analysis of main task of adult education staff as well as requirements for the personnel working in validation.- Identification and comparison of different models and guidelines for quality assurance in the validation process.By comparing our systems we found out that there exist no European standards of competences for practitioners (guides, trainers, assessors, managers) working in validation. In order to maintain quality and trust in validation the development of a clear view on skills and requirements for people working in validation needs to be taken up. Based on this insight we wrote jointly an Erasmus+ proposal that is addressing a recommendation of the Council of EU by contributing to the development of professional competences of staff involved in the validation process.