QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS:My son will be sitting his Leaving Cert in 2009. We have been looking at the Qualifax website to help him identify a list of courses for consideration on his CAO application. All the courses refer to "NFQ Level". What does this mean?

NFQ's refer to the level of a particular course of the National Framework of Qualifications. This is a system of 10 levels (1-10) that incorporates qualifications gained for all kinds of learning, wherever it is gained, whether in schools, further and higher education institutions, or other educational settings.

For instance, the Junior Certificate is at level three, apprenticeship qualifications level six, the honours bachelor degree is at level eight and a doctoral degree is level 10. Full details of the framework are available on the National Qualifications Authority website at (www.nfq.ie). It is worth distinguishing between the programme (the course) and the qualification (the award made, eg degree). The level a qualification is at indicates the standard of knowledge, skill and competence a learner is expected to have on completion of a programme.

All qualifications with NFQ levels are quality assured so the programmes, the programme providers and the higher education bodies that make the final award (ie HETAC, the Dublin Institute of Technology and the universities) are all subject to internal and external review.

Before your son makes his final decision on his post-leaving cert options, he should ask the following questions:

What qualification does the programme lead to?

Who are the awarding body? What level is the qualification on the National Framework of Qualifications?

What type of qualification (eg major, minor) is it?

What are the options to progress further after completing it?

The awarding bodies with a statutory (legal) basis to make awards are:

The State Examinations Commission (SEC): school awards (Junior and Leaving Certificates).

The Further Education and Training Awards Council (FETAC): all further education and training awards from Levels 1-6 on the NFQ.

The Higher Education and Training Awards Council (HETAC): higher education and training awards outside of the university sector from Levels 6-10 on the NFQ.

The Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT): Levels 6-10 on the NFQ.

The universities: Levels 7-10 on the NFQ.

One of the main reasons for introducing the NFQ was to provide a way of comparing qualifications. Before the NFQ, it was difficult to establish if one qualification was at a higher standard than another. It was also difficult to transfer and progress between, and within, further and higher education and training.

It is important that any learner finds out if the qualification offered after their studies is on the NFQ, and at what level.

The European and international dimension of the NFQ is also important.

In recent years, an increased emphasis has been put on the importance of learner qualifications being portable and recognisable abroad. NFQ qualifications are significant in this sense. It is expected that all European countries will eventually have national frameworks of qualifications and that these will relate to each other through a central European framework.

The early introduction of the Irish NFQ has placed the country at the centre of these developments. For example, awards made by the Open University in Ireland have recently been aligned to the NFQ.