Survey Analysis

The European Inventory published in 2014 by the European Commission presents the following challenges on validation: the access, awareness and social recognition of the potential of validation, its financial sustainability, its coherence, the professionalization of staff and data collection (meaning that no analysis on progression and cost-benefit is available) and fragmentation.

These are key challenges which should be better examined to help the further development of the validation systems. The AVA consortium did so through a questionnaire addressed to adult education providers and civil society representatives.

National validation arrangements were examined in order to identify potentials as well as obstacles in order to further develop transparent, coherent and legitimate validation arrangements. Besides of getting grass roots’ feedback on the existing systems from organisations and adult education providers, the survey had the purpose to collect interesting experiences and practice as well as to understand their challenges and fears. A special focus was kept on methodologies and innovative approaches to make validation systems more inclusive and allow disadvantaged groups to move vertically and horizontally in their personal lives and careers.

The Survey Analysis

The AVA survey analysis is composed by national summaries, an horizontal analysis and four thematic cases and was drafted on the basis of the survery results. It aims at investigating how the EU validation practices for non-formal and informal learning contribute to making validation arrangements and activities inclusive by securing permeability of processes and results and by reducing the risk of fragmentation in validation arrangements.

The analysis of survey data are carried out according to the following structure:

1. National reports (Available on demand) illustrate data from the country respondents presented in a thematic structure. The aim of the national reports is to provide the detailed and contextualized data as they stand out clearly according to respondents.
2. National summaries present in a condensed form the data from country reports. Information has been grouped following the three AVA key-concepts.
3. The horizontal analysis provides the cross-country and cross-thematic analysis of results. This analytical level comprises the main part of the AVA survey analysis and provides as such the core line for the AVA group’s further use of survey results.