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In the years 2008 and 2017, the European parliament and the council published respective updated the European Qualification Framework (EQF) for Lifelong Learning to increase transparency and comparability of qualifications and the mobility of workers. Since then no or only very few advantages induced by QF have been published. One of the main reasons is the inherent broadness and openness of the descriptors of the levels. A promising approach to overcome this dilemma could be Sector Qualification Frameworks (SQF); ICSAS and DIA-CVET projects developed, implemented and evaluated a SQF level 2 to 7 for the sector of industrial shoe production.

Dual Vocational Education and Training (VET) or apprenticeship schemes as a promising approach to overcome economic crisis in south Europe and to adapt the handling of new technologies when these reach the “world of work” (and not yet VET-schools) is since years high on the agenda of European and national policies. Consequently a manifoldness of approaches and projects have been started to support Work-Based Learning (WBL) in all of its forms, for a comprehensive overview see for example WBL-toolkit (2018). However, being honest, most of these measures are rather far away from “real” apprenticeship schemes; most approaches are internships, learning projects, simulations, etc. In our current ERASMUS+ project “Integrating Companies in a Sustainable Apprenticeship System” (ICSAS 2017), we are focusing on the sector of industrial shoe production and are working on the question, whether an approach, being close to apprenticeship scheme in Germany, is of benefit within and for school-based VET-systems of Portugal (PT), Romania (RO), and Spain (ES).&nbsp