The TVLC project started in November 2016 and ends in April 2019.

The VET Learning Community is a project in which mainstream and special VET providers throughout Europe work together to improve their quality of services. They do this by benchmarking and benchlearning on topics of quality assurance and quality culture.

This 2,5 year project is funded by the Erasmus+ programme - KA2 - Cooperation for Innovation and the Exchange of Good Practices / Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project website

Project introduction

The key factors for quality in VET can been seen from 2 different perspectives: the visible factors which include the quality system and the quality behaviour of staff, and the non-visible factors: the quality awareness of staff and the quality culture of the VET provider. In many initiatives the development of high quality work has been focused on the visible factors. Recent research learned that the non-visible factors (= how we really think about and act on quality) might have a bigger impact on the quality of the delivered VET services.

Therefore the project will emphasis both on visible and on non-visible factors for the development of high quality work through:

• systematic comparing
• exchanging and learning from day-to-day practices

Expected results

As results of the project we will have:

• A method on:
  benchmarking with various tools for transferring qualitative information into quantitative information
  learning and exchanging experiences based on the benchmark information (charts and graphics)
• A curriculum of specific training modules related to quality cultural aspects and to the EQAVET building blocks

Aims and objectives

The project has 2 objectives:

• Improving the overall quality performance and quality culture of mainstream and special VET providers by systematic benchmarking and bench learning.
• Contributing to inclusive education by creating sustainable partnerships between mainstream and special VET providers.

For the improvement of the overall quality and the quality culture we will systematically exchange, compare and learn on

• Quality topics derived from the EQAVET framework
• Quality culture topics derived from a Quality Culture assessment.

About the EQUAVET Framework

The EQAVET framework is a common framework for as well as regular VET providers and specialised VET providers. VET providers also have shown interest in the development and the improvement of a quality culture as they recognise the importance of the good quality culture as a condition for providing quality services. These two communalities in interest are taken as two specific areas of interest for starting up a more intense cooperation and exploration on opportunities (incl. challenges) for contributing to the creation of Inclusive Education in the countries of the project partners. The project would like to contribute to the creation of sustainable partnerships between specialised VET providers and mainstream VET providers by creating a platform for systematic exchanging, comparing and learning of quality topics derived from the EQAVET framework and learning of quality topics derived from a Quality Culture assessment.

Project Partners

The core of the project consortium includes 5 specialised VET providers and 5 regular VET providers from 5 different EU member states: the Netherlands, Estonia, Lithuania, Slovenia and Portugal.

The EQUASS unit of the EPR acts as an expert organisation in this project, and has proven expertise, competences and experiences in assessing, consulting and training VET providers on topics as quality culture, inclusive education and EQAVET related issues.