Transcript VAE rotterdam
The Experience of the Cités des Métiers in the French context of Validation of Prior Learning (VPL)
Dr Bernadette THOMAS Universcience-Paris International Network of the Cités des métiers 1st VPL Biennale-Rotterdam – 2014 April 9-11
Presentation
• 1. The VAE, a cross history with the Cités des métiers (CDMs) • 2 . The Law on social modernisation set up the VAE in 2002 • 3 . Mixed results of 10 years of VAE • 4. Feedback on the ground on VAE in CDMs • 5 . Some critical Success Factors
1. CDM, a cross history with VAE
The Cité des métiers, a concept of pooling services
• The first CDM opened in 1993 inside the Cité des sciences et de l’industrie in PARIS-La Villette • A close partnership unit gathers in the same location the main partners in orientation, career guidance, professional integration and advancement, business creation, with the aim to widen access to services to everybody, young and adult people , with quality criteria in relation to this access • On the same model, 40 CDMs have been created and an NGO « international network of the CDMs » was created in 2001
A Cité des métiers offers a platform for all professional transitions
• • • Organised in « counselling desks » responding to the user purposes (choose an orientation, find a training course, search a job or an employment, create one’s own activity, validate one’s achievements,…) Based on a multi-partnership structure Sharing the skills, resources and means among professionals from different institutions
The 3 dimensions of counselling interview in a Cité des métiers:
• • • Information of the person, Diagnostic of his/her situation, Transfer of knowledge and methodology to help the user to become more autonomous in building a strategy, defining an action plan or in decision making.
Definition of the competence for a counsellor in a Cité des métiers
• • • • « To be efficient according to the situations that occur », facing to: Pathways becoming more diversified and complex More opportunities for re-engaging with education and training (with VAE for ex.) Important volume of information unable to be mastered solely by one person
Several aims to implement in the same area:
• To provide all publics, youth and adults alike, with personalised advice free of charge, • To offer varied services (documentation, information days, training workshops, recruiting forums, clubs,etc) on everything concerning their working life: orientation, employment, training, upgrading acquired experience, • To provide the most appropriate responses to the multiple needs.
The Charter and labelling system
• • • Define the common reference points for the quality assurance system in guidance provision. The Cité des métiers Charter constitutes a professional gentleman’s agreement providing a context for the safeguarding of the people interests.
Criteria have to be satisfied to obtain and keep the CDM ‘s approval.
The 5 criteria to define a plateform « Cité des métiers »
• • • Focused on User needs and open to any one Broadly accessible (Free access, self-service, confidentiality) Dedicated to any professional sector or topic • • Supported by a wide counselling and funding partnership Based on interaction of different type of support and media (individual tools and group dynamic)
2. The Law on social
modernisation set up the VAE (Validation des Acquis de l’Expérience) in 2002
Law on social modernisation of the 17th january 2002 An evolution … A revolution
Accreditation of skills acquired on the work place (1985) Access to training thanks to the experience Validation of Professionnal Achievements (1992) No age limit – 5 years of professional experience–Access to get a diploma Validation des Acquis de l’Expérience (2002) 3 years of professional experience. Experience acquired. Diploma / Titles / Professional Certification
Since 1992, the Law has recognized that skills, competences and knowledge can be the outcomes of the professionnal activity and that they have an equal value independantly of the type of setting where they were acquired.
Education Experience Qualification Diploma Vocational Training
The Law on social modernisation of January 2002 modified: 1. The Labour Code
Inclusion of the VAE in the Labour Code Art 133 Creation of a right to VAE and of an individual VAE leave
(art L 900-1)
Accompaniement financed by the employer
(art R 950-3)
2. The Education Code
Art 134 «Diplomas or professional titles are achieved through schools or universities, through apprenticeship, vocational training, learning.
part or the totality, through validation of prior Validation of learning outcomes has the same effect than the other ways of assessment of knowledge and skills »
(Art L 335-5)
3. Mixed results of 10 years of VAE
•
Success is proven but the development remains modest
Increasing number of beneficiaries: 2002-2012 : 230 000 • Among 49 000 candidats, 28 000 obtained a certification (complete validation) in 2012 • Two Main sectors: 1. state education 2. health and social sector • Increasing number of certifications accessible to the VAE : 7700 in 2012, including 2872 certifications recorded on the demand of training companies or professional branches
Collateral advantages
By Vincent Merle : Far from dissuading people to form, encouragement to engage in courses of formation, No devaluation of diplomas No inflation of the wages due to an automatic repercussion on the wage increase VAE has woked desires for recognition and validation
4. Feedback from the ground on VAE in the CDMs
In what extends the VAE responds to the implicit and explicit demands of users ?
• Interviews on the counselling desk dedicated to career guidance (professional changing, evolving, assessing one’s achievement) to find advice to build their professional project • Collective activities related to VPL: Workshops, clubs, specific programs like Ressort (Resources to
Securise Salaries in their Orientation and Transitions, FSE 2011-2013)
A counselling objective is also to enhance empowerment among users
• The counsellor cannot be simply a technocratic agent serving as a vehicle for information or dissemination of a measure, • The objective of a CDM counsellor is to serve individual needs by expanding awareness of options and opportunities, and enabling the persons to make decisions wisely so that they can have more fulfilling lives
The collective competence of a system
• • • • A great range of competences needed to be mastered by the CDM counsellors, They need to mobilise many resources, to combine them in a relevant way to be efficient, A counsellor cannot be competent alone and outside the work context, The skills are closely linked to the work situation.
The competence in the CDMs focuses on the working process
It results of the cooperation in a framework based on complementarity between the counsellors of different organisms involved in a close partnership inside the CDM: sharing knowledge, skills to improve the reception and information of multi-status users building strategies and in implementing action plans.
and to provide them the best help in
CDM Living Lab : A community « clubs » incubator
• • • • • • • • • •
Such as : El Taller (Latinos), 45+ (older workers), Post graduated, Chronic Illness, Contest’s loosers, Skills Assestment, God fathers or mothers, Trans-Gender Jobs, Women designing SME Skills coming from elsewhere
Positive effects of the collective activities proposed in Ressort Project
For each of the following, would you say that your participation in this or these workshop (s) helped you to...
Gain motivation for the next steps and your future developments 80% Gain confidence in you professionally Define and deepen your professional project 72% 67% Review your route 65% Learn more about your rights as salaried 39% Make contact with other participants / users of the Cité des métiers 26% To discover other players in vocational training 24%
Source: Survey Opinionway for the Cité des Métiers of Paris – Survey Participants RESSORT/ December 2013
The findings on the counselling desk
“Change one’s professional life, evolve, assess one’s achievements” • 65% of people having a consultancy come here on their own initiative.
• Half deals with a degree of National Education, 12, 6% Health and Social sector (delivered by the Health department) • VAE represents only 17% of the 4764 consultations with a CDM advisor • Only 4.8% of people interested in VAE ask for entering in a training process. • The motivations for consultation are diverses. The
VAE is not always the answer to meet the needs of people
.
• This is sometimes
the counsellor who guides to the VAE.
People expectations can be multiple but often they are not so clear :
• There are real professional issues (change of work, open a right to work, put their skills in line with an employment reference ....) • A research to open new perspectives with a training project. • Different expectations: to confirm a route, monitor their skills, recognition by peers (reassurance about its own value) • But also expectations that lie behind the object of consultation.
Purpose of consultancy , among the 810 interviews in 2013 concerned by VAE, at the counselling desk CSVP-EVA .
Purpose of the Consultancy
Reconversion Evolution VAE Skills Assessment Formation
Percentage of people consulting about another purpose
3% 9,9% 84%* 4% 13,6% * VAE is the unique purpose of the interview for 84% of people concerned by VAE during the interview
Obstacles linked to the top-down process
• Ignorance of the actual operation of the device, • Heaviness of the device : the high cost of registration, the huge investment in time and effort spent, • Difficulty in developing and maintaining a constant motivation to undertake the process in its duration till obtaining the validation without moral & social support , • VAE appears as an excuding and reducing approach / person and a purely “adequationist” approach in the line of segmentation and fragmentation that characterizes the labour market, • Problem with reference frames : There are still no diploma or CQP corresponding to validate the experience and proven skills of a person.
M
ajor positive effects on individuals and organizations • Triggering a virtuous process of Revitalization to move into lifelong Learning and professional development • Stimulate the development of less formal approaches to training throughout life that may be more relevant • Promote alternative validation sufficient to meet the various need for recognition
The most important is to consider the individual course and the process rather than the device itself
4. Some critical success factors
At micro level : counsellors’ professionnalisation to pooling working
• Propose personalized interview/advice, broader than the VAE consulting too focused on the device : to help individuals understand their situation, develop appropriate solutions, make decisions, • Focus on the needs of individuals and their explicit and implicit demands, • Teaching people to develop their own skills to cope with transitions marking their education, formative and professional pathways, • Developing autonomy in helping them acquire reflexive methods and evaluate themselves, • Act on personal springs and give meaning to the process , • Long-term support with personalized advice and group support through informal structures promoting the exchange of practice and peer learning as clubs
At the meso level of territories: Coordination, cooperation and social innovation • • Strengthen cooperation with a network organization between the actors of VAE: training, employment , orientation, professional branches, local authorities, companies, VAE financing bodies to improve the efficiency of the process, Rely on multi partnership s and multi publics structures, such as CDMs, able to advise and guide people with multiple status, • Rely on associative structures that have an important mediating role between individuals with specific issues and institutions ( like IRIV ), • • Build, in complement to VAE, more flexible and less exclusionary forms of VPL co-constructed in line with the changing environment, Invent and promote bottom up valorisation pathways by focusing on the motives of those seeking a recognition / validation To bridge the gap between people's expectations and existing top down devices (balance sheet, VAE, ... )
CONCLUSION :
• The revolution: VAE a legal device which brings to wonder about the act to learn, the place of diplomas in the company, the social advancement, the organisation of work.
• Next steps of evolution: Recognition of collective bottom up approaches of VPL.
Ressort Project
• With a partnership with OPACIF (Approved Joint Organisation for Personal Training Leave), the CDM offers a comprehensive program combining collective information sessions, individualinterviews, workshops, clubs that allows employees and independent workers to find adequate resources to prepare for their transition.
Thanks for your attention
The international network: http://reseaucitedesmetiers.org
The Cité des métiers of Paris- la Villette : http://www.citedesmetiers.com