The National Authority for Qualifications (NQA), in partnership with the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection (MLSP), is implementing a strategic project to improve the NQF regulation. The 2020-23 project ‘Increasing the administrative capacity of NQA and MLSP through systematisation and legislative simplification in the field of qualifications’ is financed under the Administrative Capacity Building Programme 2014-20.

One of the project activities links VET to the labour market, and improves existing links between ESCO and the Romanian Classification of Occupations (RCO). An in-depth analysis of ESCO was conducted by education and labour experts, and mapping of 4340 RCO and 1156 ESCO occupations was completed.

The mapping resulted in a preliminary inventory as part of the forthcoming common platform, which will offer an automatic connection (extended European network of employment services (EURES) platform based on Regulation (EU) 2016/589 of the European Parliament and of the Council) and links to all national classifications of the EU Member States. This will allow a Romanian citizen doing a job search on the EURES platform to find, for example, the ‘electrical engineer’ qualification in another country, including the national classification code and the code corresponding to the classification of that country.

The second phase of the mapping exercise involves developing the correspondence between ESCO competence groups and major ISCO groups, and their correlation with ISCED. This will allow the developers of occupational standards to use the common European competences while ensuring improved transparency of qualifications; it will also allow training providers to adapt their training programmes to the European ones, and workers to acquire recognition for their competences.

The last phase of the exercise will include updating the RCO and introducing new occupations, an activity planned for the period 2023-24.

More information about the project activities and preliminary results of the mapping exercise are available on the project web page (in Romanian).

 

Please cite this news item as: ReferNet Romania; Cedefop (2022). Romania: stronger link between ESCO and classification of occupations. National news on VET