The EHFA Standards Council

The EHFA Standards Council was an independent body able to provide strategic advice, guidance and direction to EHFA in relation to standards for People, Programmes and Places across the health and fitness sector. It was independent in the sense that mattered: its authority over the content of the standards did not come from the board, and its membership was drawn from the sector's employers, educators, accreditation bodies and suppliers rather than from any single interest within it.

The council's purpose was to support the association's goal of getting more people, more active, more often. It was responsible for the direction and strategic thinking behind the developing regulatory framework that underpins public confidence in the work and development of the European health and fitness industry, in what the association described as a complex environment of European dimensions, and it worked closely with the European Commission, especially in support of its Lifelong Learning Programme.

Three functions were set out for it:

• To monitor developments across and outside the industry, to ensure that the European framework and standards for the fitness industry were fit for purpose and up to date.
• To develop and monitor a work programme for the Technical Experts Group in terms of standards development.
• To provide the technical support and structure to ensure that the development of the European Register of Exercise Professionals, EREPS, was in line with the standards process.

The chairman of the council was Professor Alfonso Jiménez, who was elected at the 2009 EHFA general assembly. Its three-year strategic plan for 2009 to 2011 was approved by the EHFA board in June 2009. On scientific questions the council was advised by the Scientific Advisory Board.

The plan was focused on the development of the standards that define the competences required of people working in the fitness industry. It was part of a wider process of developing a sector framework, which in turn was based on the eight levels of the European Qualifications Framework.

The EQF is a common European reference framework which links countries' qualification systems together, acting as a translation device to make qualifications more understandable. It is there to help learners and workers who wish to move between countries, change jobs, or move between educational institutions at home. It uses eight reference levels based on learning outcomes, defined in terms of knowledge, skills and competences, and it shifts the focus from input - the length of a learning experience, the type of institution - to what a person holding a particular qualification actually knows and is able to do.

Shifting the focus in that way was intended to support a better match between the needs of the labour market and the provision of education and training; to make it easier to validate non-formal and informal learning; to facilitate the transfer and use of qualifications across countries and between education and training systems; and to allow units of learning outcome to be transferred on the basis of a credit system, which is what ECVET provided. It also recognised that Europe's education systems are so diverse that comparisons based on inputs, such as a length of study, are impracticable.

The review of the original EHFA standards of 2005 was identified as a priority action, and the new version, based on EQF levels 3 and 4, was approved by the EHFA general assembly in April 2010, at the meeting held in Essen on 23 April. The council's method for deciding what belongs in a qualification is set out on the current standards page, and the levels themselves on the EQF levels 3 and 4 page.

An important consideration in the membership of the council, and one intended to reflect the principal industry stakeholder groups, was the formation of working groups. Their main role was to provide advice and guidance and a balance to the direction and policy of the council regarding its programmes of work. The groups starting in 2010 and 2011 were:

• Suppliers
• Higher education
• Training providers for vocational education and training
• National associations
• Research and labour market
• Accreditation bodies
• Employers and operators
• Employees, meaning the professionals registered with EREPS

The council set the terms of reference for each group, identified the key leaders, and suggested an agenda of topics that the industry had considered relevant in each area, as a starting point. The people who held the council's seats are listed on the Standards Council members page.