Belgium-FR 2018

The Ministry of the French Community regulates formal education in collaboration with school boards. The Walloon and Brussels Regions are in charge of vocational training and employment, and four regional public training services regulate vocational training provisions. This sharing of competences requires close and regular intergovernmental cooperation, with formal and non-formal agreements, to ensure the consistency of the system.

The three executive bodies of French-speaking Belgium (the French Community, the Walloon Region and COCOF) initiated the CFC development and established an expert group to do the preparatory work. This group includes representatives from all levels of education and regional bodies for vocational training. After 2010, a new steering group was set up, including stakeholders from general education (at all levels and of all types, including universities) and vocational/professional education and training (including social partners). With the adoption of the 2015 decree, operationalising the agreement between the three francophone governments ([9] Ministère de la Communauté française (2015).), responsibilities and implementation processes for the framework have been established. The decree establishes the CFC Forum (Instance CFC) as a steering and coordinating authority, composed of various bodies (Decree of 15 May 2015):

1. the Executive Committee manages day-to-day requests for allocation of qualifications to levels, the evaluation of the CFC and the updating of the qualifications register;
2. the Management Committee assigns a level to the qualifications submitted by education and training operators. The organisation of the Management Committee is governed by internal regulations;
3. the Committee of Experts provides its opinion on current and future decisions by the Management Committee, along with useful information on the functioning of the system and evaluation of its implementation;
4. the Board of Appeal deals with appeals on the allocation of levels to qualifications ([10] For more information on the composition of the Management Board, the Committee of Experts and the Board of Appeal, please consult the Government Order of the French Community (February 2017) appointing these members. The order can be found at: https://www.gallilex.cfwb.be/document/pdf/43594_000.pdf).

During its first two years of its operation, the Executive Committee has created a common working culture and an environment of trust around its main task of managing positioning requests. As the only public service body in French-speaking Belgium that involves representatives of all public VET operators, the Management Committee also contributes to the establishment of dialogue with the parties involved. The Committee of Experts met for the first time in March 2018. Its membership was extended to the Skills validation consortium (Consortium de validation des compétences) ([11] The Consortium de validation des compétences – the Skills validation consortium – which was created by the cooperation agreement of 24 July 2003, groups together five education and vocational training operators (the EPS, the FOREM, Bruxelles Formation, the IFAPME and the SFPME) whose aim is to award qualifications by the validation of prior learning on behalf of the three executives of the FWB, Wallonia and the COCOF (Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles and Wallonie COCOF, 2013).), the social partners, and the services of the Inspectorate of Education ([12] Since the 2007 decree, the inspectorate has been reorganised and now represents a major element of the education system in terms of quality. The Inspectorate is competent for primary and secondary education as well as for the education for social promotion and the arts higher education. The higher education for social promotion and the arts higher education are thus subject to two quality assurance systems: the AEQES and the Inspectorate (Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles and Wallonie COCOF, 2013).). This reflects the importance attached to consulting all CFC stakeholders (Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles and Wallonie COCOF, 2018).

The division of the framework into two main strands – educational and professional qualifications – has implications for stakeholder involvement. The Service francophone des metiers et qualifications (SFMQ) plays a key role in defining and positioning professional qualifications at levels 1 to 4. The SFMQ is well placed to play this role as its overall task is to develop occupational profiles based on the inputs from the social partners and in collaboration with employment services. Its role is also to develop training profiles for these occupational profiles, in liaison with education and training providers. The Academy of Research and Higher education (ARES) will be responsible for defining and positioning educational higher education qualifications at levels 6 to 8. This procedure is still in process. ARES and SFMQ will share responsibility for qualifications at level 5, reflecting the extensive 'mix' of professional and educational qualifications at this level.

The quality assurance system in French-speaking Belgium involves an external and formative assessment approach for higher education programmes, implemented by the Agency for quality assessment in higher education (AEQES) ([13] The AEQES is an independent public service and a full member of the European ENQA network, and is included on the European quality assurance register for higher education (EQAR).). In addition, a legal assessment and inspection procedure is implemented by the General Inspectorate for basic, secondary, special and social promotion education in particular. This approach is also used by the IFAPME/SFPME through the Training Directorate whose role is to inspect training centres. Since there are different quality assurance systems, it is necessary to develop a common internal structure to bridge those systems and promote convergence/harmonisation of the quality assurance systems (Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles and Wallonie COCOF, 2013).