Professional profile of the Credential Evaluator

THE CREDENTIAL EVALUATOR: UNI AND CIMEA SET THE STANDARDS FOR THE PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY THAT COMPARES ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATIONS

October 22, 2021 – UNI (Italian Standardisation Body) e CIMEA (Information Centre on Mobility and Academic Equivalences) have defined the guidelines of the Credential Evaluator, i.e., the professional figure which, thanks to specific expertise in the different international education and training systems, is able to evaluate and recognise educational and professional qualifications for the purpose of a “comparison”.

The standards, collected in the new UNI/PdR 120:2021 Reference Document “Non-regulated professional activities - Professional profile of the Credential Evaluator - Requirements of knowledge, skills and responsibility and autonomy”, establish the ethical and deontological aspects of the profession, as well as the main responsibilities and specific activities pertaining to two distinct levels, Junior and Senior.

That is to say, with the purpose of clearly identifying the level of autonomy and responsibility to be consistent with the National Qualifications Framework (NQF). These requirements are also expressed in such a way as to facilitate and contribute to making the compliant assessment procedures as homogeneous and transparent as possible. The document ends with an appendix dedicated to the applicable ethical and deontological aspects.

Both levels of the professional figure must have characteristics such as the ability to perform a qualification recognition procedure, to acquire all the information necessary to carry out the recognition procedures, to provide all useful information to the applicant, to verify the authenticity of the documents and their compliance with the standards envisaged in the reference education and training system, and to prepare and communicate the outcome of the evaluations.

Some tasks, on the other hand, are expected exclusively of the Senior professional such as - for example - that of cooperating with the main players that at national and international level deal with recognition, monitoring the quality of recognition procedures, carrying out research activities and developing new knowledge in the field of recognition of qualifications.

According to Luca Lantero, Director of CIMEA, “The ultimate goal of the Reference Document is to help support the mobility of graduates and professionals around the world by guaranteeing them fair recognition of their qualifications, in line with the internationalisation strategies of the Ministry for Universities and Research. As CIMEA, we have contributed to the drafting of the Reference Document by bringing to bear 40 years of experience in this field with the desire to create an increasingly transparent and organic framework of the knowledge, skills and abilities that a credential evaluator must have, in order to always guarantee a correct evaluation of foreign qualifications”.

The UNI/PdR 120:2021 is available for download in Italian and English in the Catalogue section of the UNI website at https://bit.ly/3C5ob77.