ABOUT

The acronym THESS project stands for “Tourism and Hotel management Educational Soft Skills”. THESS project is designed to establish a practical European Standard qualification for the hotel and tourism sector, which wishes to be cost and time efficient and available for a wide range of potential users. Project THESS and its outcomes aim at following target groups: Tourism & Hotel management teachers, learners, (future) assessor trainers and accredited teachers.

The THESS project builds on the INGOT project which finished in 2012 and provided European Standard for accredited qualifications supporting learning about Open Systems and transition to web based technologies. So far few qualifications providers have been putting EQF levels on nationally accredited qualifications. THESS project aims to transfer INGOT innovation to the sector hotel and tourism and to new EU members to widen the understanding o fEQF/ECVET and to demonstrate how formal and informal learning can be accredited at low cost and in a scalable way that can reach all parts of the EU. The impact of the project will be to directly support EU citizens in socially disadvantaged groups and younger ages, to gain vocationally related qualifications facilitating their personal development. This is supported by improvements in quality through innovation in VET delivery systems and practice. The project will support the establishment of P-scale certification as a transnational provision, on the same footing as mainstream EQF qualifications.

Key objectives:

• to provide and disseminate accreditation system for the field hotel and tourism and encourage development of accreditation systems in other fields,

• to support personal development through the universal take up of formal, nationally accredited qualifications, cross-referenced with -the EQF, by lowering barriers to entry,

• to transfer the innovative methods and technologies for low cost certification that provides progression routes to EQF qualifications,

• to transfer greater understanding of the design and methods for assessing competence based qualifications structured in units of learning outcomes,

• to support progression to EQF with a VET e-learning program based on ECVET principles.