The Europass platform provides its users with the opportunity to search and browse a growing number of qualifications and learning opportunities. Member States and other Europass countries are invited to publish and share data on learning opportunities and qualifications from their national databases. By gathering and visualising data from all countries in a single place, Europass promotes the searchability and visibility of skills-related data, to help support the recognition of learning in Europe. 

Currently, the data published in Europass is accessible via the Course Search function, allowing anyone to find qualifications and learning opportunities in Europe in a single space in a comparable visualisation. Additionally, registered Europass users can choose to receive learning opportunity recommendations from the published data in their account, further promoting the visibility of the data. 

The collection of learning opportunity and qualification datasets in a common European format has further potential, including providing data for the creation of skills recommender systems, helping plan lifelong learning and career pathways and supporting mobility through easy access to information across countries. 

What is the difference between a qualification and learning opportunity? 

A learning opportunity can generally be understood as a specific course (e.g. the Basics of Coding at Learning Centre Y) or training programme (e.g. a Master’s in Political Science at University X) that a person can apply for and enroll in. Learning opportunities are always provided by an organisation (e.g. Learning Centre Y or University X), at a distinct place (that can also be online), with a start and end date. A qualification, on the other hand, can either refer to the formal outcome of an assessment or validation process from a competent authority resulting from taking part in a learning opportunity (qualification award), or a description, a standard that describes a diploma, certificate or degree, without the details of when, where and by whom the programme/courses are delivered.

What are the benefits of publishing data?

Europass provides a basis for EU-wide learning opportunity and qualification search tools allowing individuals to find, interpret and compare qualifications and learning across borders. The main advantage is the increase in transparency and mutual understanding of qualifications and learning opportunities within Europe. The availability of this information can also serve as the basis for many additional tools such as skill recommender systems, learning pathway building systems and more. The existence of reliable data is crucial for the development of additional tools to support lifelong learning.

Publishing qualifications

When countries complete the referencing process of their National Qualifications Framework to the European Qualifications Framework, they are invited to publish their qualifications in a register and link it to Europass to ensure that the information is accessible in a transparent way at European level. Furthermore, publishing qualifications allows recognition stakeholders and bodies (such as the ENIC-NARIC network) to easily access information from other countries. Providing reliable information on qualifications supports the recognition process.

Publishing learning opportunities

The publication of learning opportunities supports learning mobility across Europe by making information available to a wide pool of learners. This also increases the visibility of the education and training offer across Europe.

Finally, Europass users benefit from targeted learning opportunity recommendations. This system relies on high quality, up-to-date, and rich data that is provided by the national authorities of the Member States and Europass/EQF countries.

How to proceed: a single register with a single standard

The Commission provides a back-end infrastructure called the Qualification Dataset Register (QDR) to Member States and Europass countries to share their data on learning opportunities and qualifications. Access to the QDR is restricted to national authorities as they are responsible for the content and quality of the data. The quality control by the national authorities is a cornerstone to ensure trust in the information published on Europass. 

When publishing information on qualifications or learning opportunities, a Member State does so by using the European Learning Model (ELM). This data model includes all the existing EU level standards for learning and provides a single format for describing learning opportunities or qualifications. Being able to consult information on qualifications and learning opportunities in the same, multilingual format allows for easier comparison between different entries. 

Additionally, providing a single format to publish this information eases the data exchange process across Europe. A single multilingual data structure allows for the transfer of information without having to manually convert or translate it from one format/language to another. Therefore, it is a tool to promote interoperability in learning, which is very useful for institutions who have students on mobility coming from abroad, or for an employer who wants to understand the context of a qualification a prospective employee has received abroad. 

Next steps 

More countries are regularly sharing their qualifications and learning opportunities or updating their information. Many countries are also enriching the content of the information of the qualifications and learning opportunities to provide additional, useful details to end-users (such as the language of instruction).

In addition, ongoing development related to the implementation of the Individual Learning Account (ILA) should lead to the connection of these ILA registers with Europass, thus enriching the learning offer visible to Europass users.

In the future, the European Commission will explore how to better link ESCO skills with the learning outcomes for each instance of qualifications and learning opportunities shared by Member States.