The regulation on conditions and procedures for validating professional knowledge, skills and competences came into force in January 2015.

The validation procedure verifies compliance of professional knowledge, skills and competences – acquired through non-formal and informal learning – with State educational requirements, and guarantees better access to vocational training and the labour market. However, only qualifications in professions and specialities included in the list of professions for vocational education and training (VET) can be validated.

Institutions entitled to carry out validation include: VET schools, vocational gymnasiums, art schools, sports schools, vocational colleges and VET centres.

Validation includes procedures for identifying professional knowledge, skills and competences acquired, and provides two types of certification:

  1. certificate for validating level of vocational qualification: following an exam, it certifies that all learning outcome units defined in the State educational requirement have been achieved;
  2. certificate for acquiring a vocational qualification for part of a profession: following an exam, it certifies that one or several learning outcome units included in the State educational requirement have been achieved.

Holders of these certificates have the same rights as those who have attained corresponding certificates through the formal education system.

Validation procedures are controlled by regional education inspectorates and the National Agency for VET. These institutions also provide consultation, guidance, information, methodology materials and normative documents for validation.

Validation procedures are funded by natural bodies, legal entities, via programmes and projects financed through national and regional funds, ESF resources or resources from the European Economic Area.

More information:

National Agency for VET (NAVET)

State educational requirements (SER)