EC – VPL (NL)

The European Centre Valuation Prior Learning (EC-VPL) was founded in 2002 and is a non-profit organisation. The Centre, with a structural staff of 6 persons and an auxiliary staff of 2 to 8, studies, accumulates and distributes information on all conceivable aspects of lifelong learning strategies in which the systematics of prior learning validation/validation (PLV) plays a structuring role. The centre’s mission is to give priority to the systematics of VPL in its functionalities for the company and its stakeholders. VPL is a systematic method that, regardless of the type of learning program, focuses on the recognition, valorization, validation and development of competencies that a person has already acquired in any type of learning environment. Personalised learning is the concept of dynamic learning centred on the individual learner, who can initiate (or help to initiate) and establish individual learning programmes tailored to his or her needs in a learning culture based on autonomous, flexible and forward-looking lifelong learning. PLV and personalized learning are learning processes that allow citizens or individual learners to take an active role in the “learning society” when it comes to obtaining personal, civil and/or social effects. Civil effect means achieving a learning outcome in the context of a particular qualification standard within the education system. The social effect focuses on outcomes that are relevant to job profiles, goals, participation objectives or assignments. The personal impact may mean the achievement of empowerment, career and study guidance or personal development. It is the “power of VPL” that opens the broader perspective of a society in which every citizen has access to learning opportunities and can design his or her own learning path for the benefit of “society” (i‧e. the society).