Every seafarer would like to have the freedom to work on board as many foreign flag vessels as possible using her/his qualifications acquired in her/his own country. The certificates issued by a national administration are expected to satisfy the minimum requirements set by International Maritime Organisation (IMO), which should ideally satisfy the national requirements of member states of IMO and hence acceptable to all IMO member states. However, in reality this is not a case and the certificates issued by one country are not universally accepted or transferable to other flags. This situation restricts the mobility of seafarers; thus causing nationally qualified professionals often to be excluded from working on/commanding identical vessels other than those registered by the seafarer’s own national flag. Considering that there are imbalances of surpluses and shortages of officers and ratings in most countries, current situation does not help to address the shortages by taking advantage of the surpluses elsewhere.
This paper reports on an experiment, an EU funded project known as TRECVET, introducing a means of transferring and recognising prior learning and achievement through the European Credit system in Vocational Education and Training (ECVET); a system which aims to remedy the non-recognition of similar qualifications/certificates gained in one country by other countries.
The TRECVET project is developing software methods to make syllabi comparisons more transparent. The approach relies on breaking down any course syllabi, in any given country, into its most fundamental elements such that meaningful information on commonalities, differences and country specific requirements that can be identified. By this technique, the qualifications and learning outcomes are expected to become more transparent and comparable. This approach is expected to lead to the transferability, recognition and mobility of seafarers in the project partner countries and later throughout Europe and worldwide. The tool is being designed to be scalable and able to accept syllabi from any Vocational Education and Training (VET) programme.