Unification of Maritime Education and Training

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) developed the first standard for Vocational Education and Training (VET) programmes for merchant navy officers (STCW) in 1978, and it has been amended in 1991, 1995, 2003 and 2010 respectively. However, there is currently no mechanism to monitor how these standards are being applied as many VET providers have been found not to follow many requirements.

The SOS project (2005-7) was very successful in developing a harmonised programme for the training of merchant navy seafarers and was implemented in Turkey in the TRAIN 4Cs project (2006-7).

The partnership, working in collaboration with major awarding, accrediting and licensing bodies will cross-reference and include the international and local/national requirements into the UniMET programme (SOS, MarTEL, EGMDSS, EGMDSS-VET &TRAIN 4Cs) with the aim of embedding the programme initially into 5 partner maritime education and training (MET) systems across Europe (NL,FI,TR,ES and LT).

The UniMET project will use existing networks with extensive knowledge and experience of maritime education and training (MET) institutions whose participants have a vast number of years experience in leading and participating in EU projects to support the harmonisation and standardisation of Higher Education HE programmes in Europe in line with objective of the Lisbon treaty and Bologna accord.