In December 2016, by Ordinance of the Bulgarian Minister of Education and Science, a new IT profession in the field of “Computer science” was added to the list of professions for vocational education and training. The profession is named “Applied programmer” and corresponds to EQF level 4.

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This new profession came into being through the good cooperation between the business sector and VET providers to overcome the deficit of professionals in the ICT area and thus contribute to the stable development of the software industry.

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Together with the Bulgarian Association of Software Companies (BASSCOM), the National agency for vocational education and training (NAVET) developed State educational standards for acquiring a professional qualification for “Applied programmer”, which was approved in the beginning of 2018. In the process of creating the standard, learning sources developed by the e-CF Alliance project were used.

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The valuable training content elaborated by e-CF Alliance project was presented at informational events organised by NAVET, such as conferences, workshops, round tables and seminars. The learning content is appropriate both for trainings to acquire a profession and for improving recent professional qualifications in the ICT area.

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More than 150 VET providers were informed about the innovative platform created by e-CF Alliance project. Experts from the ICT business were invited to visit the platform and their feedback was very positive. Mr. Yavor Enev, ICT project manager, gave an interview where he provided a professional evaluation of the platform content. The project platform raised great interest at an assembly of the Expert Commission in the ICT professional field, where the representative of the Bulgarian Association of Information Technologies (BAIT) asked for opportunity to share with all members this useful information.

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After publishing a link to e-CF Alliance platform on the NAVET web page, 37,180 registrations were made.

Further dissemination activities planned by NAVET will involve visiting ICT companies and other VET providers and making the project platform and other results widely disseminated.