What is ECCEL Certification?
The European Certification for Climate and Environmental Literacy (ECCEL) is a third-party certification of persons. Third-party means that an independent, impartial organization – other than the training organization, university, company or school where the candidate received some theoretical and/or practical training about the European Green Deal areas – issues a statement that “fulfilment of specified requirements has been demonstrated”.
This means that the candidate complies with the requirements of an ECCEL Certification Scheme for one of the eight ECCEL Skill Cards (covering all 8 Focus areas of the EU Green Deal, see Chapter 3.1 above and Deliverable D4.1) at a certain level (beginners, advanced, professional/trainer).
The certification scheme describes the procedure to attest that the candidate has/is able to apply the competences described in the skill card. It contains the scope of certification (8 ECCEL Focus areas at 3 different levels), the job and task description and the required competences of an ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Champion.
The certification criteria are the learning outcomes or statements defined in the ECCEL skill cards.
All the relevant processes and procedures to safeguard the same quality of ECCEL Certified Competences, Trainings, Trainers and Training Organisations in EU member states, and all over the world, are standardised. The current partners taking care of this are ECQA and CSRC from project consortium of the GreenSCENT project.
The ECCEL certification is largely based on the principles of the International Standard ISO/IEC 17024:2012-07 Conformity assessment – General requirements for bodies certifying persons, and follows the proven ECQA certification processes.
To make sure that everybody understands what means ECCEL certification by an independent third party (ECQA and CSRC), internal training activities for GreenSCENT project partners were implemented.
Every Focus area is defined by its Skill card. Listing the skills and comptences that need to be met. Due to the fact that the Age groups and their intended level (EQF) is quite different, every Focus has three skill cards, one for each level.
– Beginner (children up to 10 Years)
– Advanced (kids up to 16 years)
– Professionals (adults)
There is a potential fourth group – the trainers. Trainers need to fullfill the professional level and add an expertise of teaching and didactics to this.
Exams for the ECCEL are held in an online exam portal. This portal makes sure, registered attendees will get a standardise exam based upon their choice of level.
Exams can be arranged individually (booking will be possible on the ECQA webpage www.ecqa.org) or arranged by the training oragnisation together with the ECQA.
Due to the modular ECCEL structure, it is possible to break down the very large competence framework of GreenSCENT into a smaller set of competences relevant for the 8 different areas of the EU Green Deal.
The modular structure also enables continuous professional education and micro-certification.
Example: When a person wants to qualify as an ECCEL Climate and Environmental Champion for Climate Change, all relevant competences are described in the respective skill card for Climate Change, according to the age groups and levels (beginners, advanced, professional and trainer/educator).
The same transparent and standardized structure applies to ECCEL trainings, self-assessments, exams and the micro-certificate for ECCEL Climate and Environmental Champion for Climate Change, see below:
The 24 micro-certificates of ECCEL cover the 24 skill cards developed within the GreenSCENT project:
Beginner level: Children (until 10 years)
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Champion – Climate change – beginner
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Champion – Clean energy – beginner
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Champion – Circular economy – beginner
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Champion – Green building – beginner
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Champion – Smart mobility – beginner
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Champion – From farm to fork – beginner
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Champion – Biodiversity – beginner
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Champion – Zero pollution – beginner
Advanced level: Pupils (10-16 years)
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Champion – Climate change – advanced
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Champion – Clean energy – advanced
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Champion – Circular economy – advanced
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Champion – Green building – advanced
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Champion – Smart mobility – advanced
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Champion – From farm to fork – advanced
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Champion – Biodiversity – advanced
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Champion – Zero pollution – advanced
Professional/Trainer level: Adults
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Professional/Trainer – Climate change
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Professional/Trainer – Clean energy
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Professional/Trainer – Circular economy
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Professional/Trainer – Green building
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Professional/Trainer – Smart mobility
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Professional/Trainer – From farm to fork
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Professional/Trainer – Biodiversity
- ECCEL Certified Climate and Environmental Professional/Trainer – Zero pollution
For all of the Focus areas there is a Self assessment, that interested people can do online. This self assessment should give potential participants the idea if further reading and theoretical knowledge would be helpful in the different parts of the Focus area.
Basically training is not a must for taking the certification exam, but of course highly recommended. As every exam attempt will be result in a payment done to the exam body.
The certificates will be created automatically upon passing a focus area, giving the participant a micro certificate:
First page shows, the name and the exam date as well as the unique number of the participant. Additionally the validity of the certification is given here. The second page lists all the Units of the given Skill card (Beginner Level in this example).
Upon passing all micro certificates, a full ECCEL Certificate will be issued for the participant.