Vocational education and training (VET) systems must adapt to the labour market, to technological developments, to changes in existing occupations and to new ways of work organisation. Differences in learners’ performance or prior knowledge, skills and competences, also require flexibility in education and training provision. Modularisation and unitisation of VET programmes and qualifications is seen as part of the answer to these challenges.

This study investigates the role of modules and units in VET in 15 EU countries and aims to determine how these structures fit in the wider VET systems. It provides a comparative analysis of different modularisation and unitisation practices and the rationale behind their implementation, and an outline of the different national contexts in which modular and unitised structures developed over time. It also offers a close-up of three different approaches to modularisation in one occupational area, in Germany, the Netherlands and Scotland.