Welcome to the VET21001 Toolkit!

The VET21001 Toolkit is the output of an applied research project with the same name, co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union.

Its initial goal was to facilitate EQAVET adoption by providing VET schools with ready-to-use tools inspired by ISO 21001:2018[1]. However, considering the interest and feedback received from other educational sub-sectors during the project lifetime, it became obvious that the toolkit can also support the implementation – stand-alone or integrated – of other standards, both proprietary and formal, such as ENQA-ESG[2], ISO 9001, among others. For this reason and to make the Toolkit more inclusive, the term VET-provider was substituted by the broader term educational organization across the toolkit. The tools included in the VET21001 Toolkit are a possible approach to the requirements of the before mentioned standards but are not the only path to conformity towards them. Different approaches are possible and can be developed and implemented in educational organizations.

Presented as an open-source e-book supported by a website, the VET21001 Toolkit includes:

• a glossary with terms and definitions necessary for the correct interpretation of the Toolkit’s content;
• the management tools description and guidelines on its application, including
  • Editable Tool templates, ready to be used as is or after context adaptations
  • Use cases, in the form of filled Tool’s templates by different organizations to illustrate its application

The tools and guidelines at the VET21001 Toolkit are organized in ten thematic clusters. These are:

1. Leadership & Strategy
2. Quality & Risk Management
3. Data Protection & Control
4. Knowledge and Human Resources
5. Involvement of Stakeholders
6. Partnerships & Providers
7. Infrastructure & work environment
8. Design & Delivery of Services
9. Analyses & Evaluation
10. Review & Improvement

Each cluster provides a short introduction to the theme and lists, in the form of a matrix, the EQAVET criteria and its indicative descriptors at VET-provider level, as well as the ISO 21001:2018 requirements that are related to the theme.

In the case of EQAVET, the full text of the criteria and indicative descriptors are provided and to enable the development of the relationship-matrices, the EQAVET criteria and its indicative descriptors were numbered. The rationale used for the numbering was top-down, both for the criteria (first digit) and its indicative descriptors (second digit), following the order in which they appear in the European recommendation.

In the case of ISO 21001, the number and title of the clauses are provided, but not their full content, due to ISO copyrights. For this reason, it is recommended that users are in possession of ISO 21001 when using this Toolkit. ISO 21001 can be bought from the ISO store, as well as from any national standardization body, which list can be consulted at the ISO website.

The VET21001 Tools proposed can be used “as is”, but they can also be adapted as needed, both in terms of branding (by changing the VET21001 Logo to those of the Users) and in terms of fields (by adding, removing, or changing the current fields to adapt the tool to new contexts).

In clusters in which multiple alternative tools are being proposed to address the same requirements, users should select the preferred tool depending on the context of the organization.

The Use Cases provided as examples come from inside and outside the VET21001 Consortium. For this reason, some of them might be in the native language of the User. Any branding in the Use Cases identify the User testing the tool and not the author of the tool.

[1] Any references to ISO 21001 in this document are referring to the 2018 version.

[2] European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance published by the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education