ECTS: What Is the European Credit System and How Do You Manage It?

What Is ECTS?

ECTS, the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System, is the credit system shared by higher education institutions across the European Higher Education Area. Born with the Erasmus programme and then generalised by the Bologna process, it makes it possible to measure, compare and transfer learning from one institution or country to another.

An ECTS credit represents the student's workload, not just class time: it counts lectures, but also personal study, projects, internships and exam preparation.

Why It Matters

Credits make study paths readable. A bachelor's degree is made of 180 credits, a master's of 60 or 120 depending on the programme. A student who changes institution, goes on exchange or returns to study can have credits already earned recognised. For the institution, credits structure the programme, the workload of each year and the follow-up of success.

How It Works

• Workload: one credit corresponds to 25 to 30 hours of student work.
• Standard year: a full-time academic year normally counts 60 credits.
• Allocation per unit: credits are attached to course units and earned when the unit is passed.
• Accumulation: credits add up to the total required for the degree.
• Transfer: credits earned elsewhere can be recognised in a new programme.

A Concrete Example

A first bachelor's year totals 60 credits spread over several course units. A student takes, among others, two units of 10 credits, three of 6 credits and one of 4 credits, making 42 credits for this block. If they pass all of these units except one worth 6 credits, they earn 36 credits for the block and carry the missed unit forward. The institution needs to know, for each student, how many credits are earned, in progress or to be retaken.

Digital Implementation

In school management software, credits live at course unit level. The total of a study year is calculated from the units it contains, which makes it possible to check that a programme matches the expected volume. Tracking the credits earned by each student then relies on the results of each unit. Clean modelling avoids counting credits by hand during exam board deliberations.

Related Technologies and Tools

Credits appear in course sheets, programmes published on the institution's website, transcripts and diploma supplements. They have to be consistent everywhere, which argues for a single data source connected to the other tools.

Conclusion

ECTS is a common language that looks simple, but tracking it per student takes rigour. At KERN-IT, SchoolCore attaches credits to each course unit, with its periods and study year, so the programme and its volume stay consistent from one academic year to the next.