The Professional Training System in Portugal

Professional training is within the legal framework of Decree-Law number 396/2007, of 31st December, which establishes the juridical regime of the National Qualifications System (NQS) and defines the structure of its functioning.

The NQS adopts the principles set down in the agreement signed with the Social Partners and restructures the professional training covered under the educational system and labour market, making them come together in terms of objectives and instruments.

The following constitute the main objectives of the NQS:

• Raise the basic training of the active population, enabling its educational and professional progress;
• Guarantee that the professional courses of young persons confer double certification: educational and professional;
• Reinforce and consolidate the process of recognition, validation and certification of skills;
• Promote the qualification and socio-professional integration of groups with particular difficulties relative to insertion;
• Promote the coherence, transparency and comparability of qualifications at a national and international level.

The NQS also defines the ways to obtain qualification, through:

• Training covered under the National Qualifications Catalogue;
• Processes for the recognition, validation and certification of skills;
• Recognition of credentials acquired in other countries.

The fundamental instruments supporting the NQS are:

• National Qualifications Framework;
• National Qualifications Catalogue;
• Documents to register/compare qualifications and skills.

The NQS carries out its objectives through the following structures:

• New Opportunities Centres;
• Training Entities;
• Sectorial Advisory Committees for Qualifications.

Professional Training is organised into:

• Initial Training, in the context of certified education and training activities aimed at the acquisition of the indispensible know-how, skills and capacity required for the qualified exercise of one or more professional activities.
• Continuous Training relative to education and training activities undertaken after leaving the educational system or after re-entering the labour market, to allow individuals to further their professional and relational skills, aimed at the exercise of one or more professional activities, improved adaptation to technological and organisational change and the reinforcement of their employability.

The NQS defines the following as modalities of double certification training:

• Professional courses;
• Apprenticeship courses;
• Education and training courses for young persons;
• Education and training courses for adults;
• Specialised technological courses;
• Certified modular training.