Education Partners

EHFA supported the European Union's Lifelong Learning Programme, and it did so as a matter of policy rather than of courtesy. The programme's stated aim was to contribute through lifelong learning to a knowledge-based society with sustainable economic development, more and better jobs and greater social cohesion; the association's position was that a sector training instructors across Europe belonged inside that aim, and that the qualifications of those instructors could not be settled country by country.

The association aligned itself with the key policies of the programme, as set out in the strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training, ET 2020. It supported making lifelong learning and mobility a reality: lifelong learning strategies, qualifications frameworks, more flexible learning pathways, and the mobility of learners, teachers and trainers between countries. It supported improving the quality and efficiency of education and training, including the work on the basic skills and competences that employability rests on and on the quality of teaching. It supported the programme's emphasis on equity, social cohesion and active citizenship, and on creativity and innovation through partnerships between education and business.

The association's own argument, made to the Commission and to the sector, ran like this. Investment in human capital through education and training was fundamental to the Union's development, because well educated and well trained people are best placed to work out the answers to the social, demographic and technological problems ahead - provided the education and training is up to date. That condition matters most in a sector whose product is a service delivered by a person: what a member gets out of a club depends on what the instructor in front of them knows and can do.

For the association the policy was not abstract. Its standards work had to be legible to the European instruments, and the association's Standards Council ran an active policy of aligning the two. That meant a fully referenced sector qualification framework mapped to the European Qualifications Framework; the principles of ECVET for the transfer and accumulation of learning outcomes; and the quality indicators of EQAVET. The Bologna Process mattered for the occupations in the sector that sit at higher levels, where a qualification has to be recognisable to colleges and universities as well as to employers.

The vocational side was treated the same way. The association argued for the attractiveness, quality and performance of vocational education and training, for better transparency and guidance, and for the recognition of competences and qualifications across borders - and it pursued all of it sectorally, through the particular qualifications of the health and fitness workforce, rather than waiting for general systems to solve the problem.

The point of the policy was the people it reached. The association argued that increasing the number of well-trained individuals qualified in areas such as behaviour change and motivational interviewing would help more people adopt and keep a physically active lifestyle, which is what its objective of getting more people, more active, more often came down to in practice.

Education partners were the providers that delivered those qualifications. Their programmes were accredited against the occupational standards, and the individuals who completed them could be entered on the European Register of Exercise Professionals. The accreditation section sets out how a provider or a register was recognised, and the history of the standards covers how the framework itself was built.