EQF Levels 3 and 4

The EHFA annual general assembly, which took place in Essen on 23 April 2010, adopted the revised European Qualifications Framework levels 3 and 4 EHFA standards for fitness instructors and personal trainers.

The two levels describe two kinds of professional. At level 3 the holder works independently to a defined standard and takes responsibility for their own work; at level 4 the range of work is wider and includes responsibility for supervising the routine work of others. Written at those levels, the standards described the occupations of the fitness instructor and the personal trainer in terms that an employer in any member state could set against the qualifications of the staff it already had.

The revision changed the emphasis of the standards. The new version reflected a greater need for emphasis on soft skills and workplace competences, as opposed to an exclusive focus on technical knowledge. That is a shift towards what the work actually demands of the professional - how a session is communicated, adapted and delivered - alongside the technical content of the occupation.

Writing the standards at EQF levels was what made national comparison possible. It made national referencing easier for vocational education and training providers and for higher education providers, and it aided the mobility of exercise professionals for employment and for learning: a qualification awarded in one country could be set against the European level it corresponded to, and against a qualification held in another system.

Referencing also made the standards useful to people outside the training system. A national register deciding whether to recognise a qualification awarded abroad, or a body writing a specification for an exercise programme, could point at the level rather than at a list of courses, and could tell from it what the holder had been assessed on.

The new standards supported the development of the European Register of Exercise Professionals, EREPS, which operated under the umbrella of EHFA and recorded individual instructors against those standards. A training provider that wished its programmes to be accredited to the standards applied through the EHFA accreditation process.

EHFA continued to revise the old standards and to develop new ones in line with the European Qualifications Framework. The Technical Experts Group for EQF level 2 produced standards covering supervised professional practice, which were approved on 13 April 2011, and work had begun on the population groups the framework did not yet address.

How the content of a qualification was decided in the first place - from the purpose of the occupation and the outcomes of the work, rather than from the qualification itself - is set out on the current standards page. The full framework the standards belong to, and the projects that produced it, are described in the standards section.