KA1 courses in Europe

KA1 courses ought to be a source of professionalization on the European level. However, almost three years after the introduction of the ERASMUS+ programme there are certain issues that hamper the recovery of the full potential of the KA1 courses.
There is no central platform where
• Professionals find high quality Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses
• Course providers can advertise and organise their courses and learning offers according to professional and European standards.

Though the development of European validation systems and instruments has already started 15 years ago they have not really been implemented in KA1 courses. This means, as a consequence, that KA1 providers, as potential multipliers of European validation approaches, are not competent to apply them in their own practice.
Additionally, there is a lack of high quality learning and teaching materials for the professionalization of adult educators that can be used without legal copyright issues (OER).

By now there is no systemic approach that interconnects KA1 courses to the EQF system – which hampers a systemic approach to a true European validation of professionals in adult education in these EU-funded courses.
However, these courses could be ideal “promoters” for the EU validation approach because they are addressing exactly those professionals that ought to deal with the theme in future. It goes without saying that every applicant organisation for a KA1 funding has to state how validation of competences should take place. In most of the cases validation is treated like a traditional certification, with proofs of participation or sometimes with assessments. As previous projects show, most of the CPD courses have hardly any validation system on board which is in line with the European recommendation or the guidelines of the CEDEFOP (IMPACT- 2014-1-DE02-KA200-001611).