On 30 April the Europass project team met with the National Agency for Adult Vocational Training, AFPA, one of the Vocational Education and Training  (VET) representatives in the Europass advisory group.

The meeting gathered input on the new Europass from the perspective of adult learners and discussed how AFPA can be closely involved in the development of the new Europass platform.

According to AFPA, Europass is still seen as a tool for Erasmus students in France. The representative emphasised that the new Europass can also bring added value to learners with little to no mobility prospects.

AFPA suggested that the communication strategy of the new Europass should also target adults who are less qualified and persons with low digital skills. For the organisation, it is critical that the new platform also caters to non-formal and informal training and re-skilling and supports validation thereof, as this is a topic that particularly concerns adult learners.

They stressed that it is crucial for the new Europass to be developed as a tool that is complementary to and interoperable with existing national and European tools. The advantage of Europass is it being a multilingual platform that is offered in all languages of Erasmus+ participating countries. This could potentially also benefit refugees and migrants as it removes the language barrier and can help them find a job or further training possibilities in their host country more easily.

The organisation expressed interest in participating in the testing of early versions of the new Europass platform and could connect the Europass project team to various disadvantaged users groups such as low-skilled adults, refugees and migrants.