The ECVET-Fitness Project

ECVET-Fitness was built on the results of the Eurofit-QST project. It had one main goal: to develop and implement a European credit system for qualifications within the European Qualifications Framework in the fitness sector, mapped to the emerging ECVET structure proposed by the European Commission. The project was where the credit system stopped being a policy idea and was tested against real fitness qualifications.

Three specific aims were set for it, each attached to a work package.

• To ensure that the credit system developed for health and fitness was fit for purpose, fitting within the agreed framework and having synergy with the rest of sport (WP3).
• To develop a vocational credit system, compatible with ECVET and the EQF, for training programmes within the fitness sector at European level (WP4).
• To implement the EHFA verification system developed in the Eurofit-QST project within partner countries, compatible with the emerging Common Quality Assurance Framework, including extending EREPS in new partner countries (WP5).

Following the completion of the Leonardo da Vinci project Eurofit-QST, EHFA was restructured to enable the association to become a standards-setting body for the health and fitness industry in Europe. That change, together with the continued interest of the vocational education and training unit and the sports unit of the European Commission, encouraged EHFA to take the lead on ECVET-Fitness, supported by SkillsActive. The project was built on what Eurofit-QST had produced: a functional map, a competence framework, occupational standards, learning outcomes, a verification system for the technical competence of fitness instructors, and the European Register of Exercise Professionals.

In the short term the project was to create a new ECVET framework, built on the qualifications and standards developed in the earlier Leonardo da Vinci project, which could be embraced throughout Europe. It was expected that awarding bodies and training providers across Europe would use it to demonstrate the transparency of their training programmes, and that the framework would be integrated into the EREPS structure and website, so that people looking for training, and employers looking for people with the right skills, could see quickly and easily which programmes had been endorsed at European level through a transparent and independent process.

The longer-term expectations were these:

• Increased mobility of health and fitness professionals across Europe.
• Promotion of best practice in health and fitness instruction and training across Europe.
• The promotion of a healthy lifestyle to all European citizens.
• Improved customer confidence in fitness instruction.
• Guaranteed quality of fitness instruction and of quality-endorsed training centres.
• Pan-European qualification systems that could be validated and assessed in a number of individual EU member states.

The project page carried a last-updated date of April 2008, which places it after the first EHFA standards had been produced and before the levels 3 and 4 revision that replaced them. The framework it worked on is described in the standards section.