European Training Foundation involvement in the development of national qualifications frameworks (NQFs) dates back to the beginning of this century, when countries that are now EU member states, such as Malta and Romania, pushed the move from narrowly defined sets of qualifications to broader and more flexible frameworks that were more future-proof and involved better education and training.

In all these years, the ETF has treated NQFs not as a means in themselves, but as vehicles for education reform.

The development of NQFs forces the entire array of stakeholders in education and training to rethink the objectives of human capital development in society, the means to achieve these objectives and the ways to be engaged and engage with others in the process of maximising the potential of teachers, trainers and training centres.

In many of the ETF's partner countries, this process of reform constitutes an extremely radical set of changes in an environment – education and training – that has long been considered an almost untouchable part of a national heritage. Such reforms are not easy and any change invariably meets resistance that can only be overcome if the drivers for this change come from within.

National qualifications frameworks also offer a good opportunity for engaging partners that in many countries traditionally have not been part of the education development process, such as social partners, employers and NGOs. Their involvement will in turn impact heavily on the relevance of education and training to the needs of the labour market.