Exam centre approval for a French vocational title: conditions and process

A titre professionnel from the ministry of labour — sales advisor, administrative assistant, IT network technician — makes your courses eligible for CPF funding and attracts career-changers. But unlike an RNCP certification you would hold yourself, a titre professionnel belongs to the ministry in charge of employment: to run the exam, your organisation needs a specific approval, separate from Qualiopi. Here are the applicable rules, what the file must contain, and the pitfalls that stall or block an application.

A titre professionnel is not a certification you deliver alone

The titre professionnel is created and defined by the ministry in charge of employment: it writes the activity, competency and assessment reference frameworks, and sets the terms of the final exam. No training organisation can award a titre professionnel on its own authority, no matter how well it trains its learners. Two paths exist to access it:

• Become an approved centre organising the exam sessions yourself, the subject of this article;
• Send your candidates to an already-approved centre (your own or a partner’s), without holding the approval yourself — a common solution for a young organisation or for a title with low candidate volume.

Approval only covers organising the exam session: it does not exempt you from the usual obligations of a training organisation (activity declaration, Qualiopi for access to funding) and does not replace them.

The rules governing approval

Three decrees, all dated 2015-2016, structure the system:

Text	Purpose
Decree of 22 December 2015	Conditions for awarding the titre professionnel (jury’s role, exam structure, VAE)
Decree of 21 July 2016 on approval procedures	Criteria and procedure for approving organisations that run sessions (Article R. 338-8 of the Education Code)
Decree of 21 July 2016 on general exam session rules (amended in 2018)	Concrete running of a session: candidate notice, tests, deliberation

The key point to remember: approval is an administrative act distinct from the activity declaration and from Qualiopi. It covers your ability to faithfully organise an exam session, not the pedagogical quality of the training pathway that precedes it.

Who grants approval, and for how long

The DREETS (Regional Directorate for the Economy, Employment, Labour and Solidarity — DRIEETS in the Paris region) reviews and grants approval on behalf of the ministry in charge of employment. The application is filed with the DREETS of the region where sessions will take place; an organisation active in several regions must apply for approval in each one.

Approval’s validity period is not fixed in absolute terms: it is aligned with the lifespan of the relevant titre professionnel’s reference framework, generally 5 years. When the ministry revises a framework or it reaches its expiry date, approval must be renewed on the basis of the new framework, with an updated file.

The application file: what the DREETS checks

The file must show that the organisation has the material, documentary and human resources needed to organise a session that complies with the target title’s framework. In practice, the DREETS looks at:

• The technical setup: premises, equipment and materials matching the practical work situations required by the framework (for example a fully equipped computer workstation and the relevant software for a digital-sector title, or an equipped technical platform for an industrial title);
• The documentary resources given to candidates: professional file, tracking booklet, assessment materials matching the national templates for the title;
• The commitment to follow the general exam session rules, particularly on notifying candidates, jury attendance and deliberation procedures;
• Tracking the professional integration of title holders, a resource-based commitment that echoes obligations expected for other certifications, as covered in our article on registering a certification with the RNCP or the Répertoire Spécifique.

A strong file must prove, with supporting documents, that these resources are already in place — not merely planned.

The jury: the one piece the organisation doesn’t control

This is what surprises approval applicants most: the jury does not belong to the organisation. The decree of 22 December 2015 requires jurors to be professionals with at least 3 years’ experience in the target occupation, who have not left that occupation for more than 5 years. They are individually approved by the DREETS, independently of the organisation running the session, and at least two approved jurors must attend each exam session.

An approved organisation therefore cannot staff its own jury with its trainers or employees: it draws on jurors listed by the DREETS, or puts forward candidacies from professionals in the sector who must themselves go through the same approval process. This is a structural difference from a Qualiopi audit, where the auditor is appointed by a certification body chosen and paid by the audited organisation.

Running a compliant session

Once approved, the organisation must follow the general exam session rules at every sitting: notifying candidates within the regulatory deadlines, making the planned technical setup available, ensuring the required number of jurors actually attend, and keeping minutes of the deliberation. Failing to follow these rules can invalidate a session, or even lead to approval being withdrawn if breaches recur — a risk comparable, in its logic, to the withdrawal or suspension of Qualiopi certification in cases of serious, uncorrected non-conformity.

What approval actually delivers

The case for holding approval yourself, rather than sending candidates elsewhere, is mainly operational: control over the session calendar, no dependency on a partner centre, and a stronger image with funders and employers hiring your title holders. A study by Kässi and Lehdonvirta, published in 2022 in the Journal of Human Resources, shows on a large online labour market that obtaining a verifiable credential raises workers’ earnings not because it makes them more productive, but because it reduces the employer’s uncertainty about their actual skills (see the study on Google Scholar). The mechanism transfers directly to the titre professionnel: its value lies less in what it teaches than in the institutional, verifiable guarantee it gives any employer about the holder’s skills.

Take action

Approval for a titre professionnel is a separate process from Qualiopi, but both files rely on the same documentary rigour and cohort tracking. The Complete Kit Certif at €297 gives you the evidence and tracking templates that will also serve your approval file, the ebook Create Your Training Organisation in 30 Days at €67 lays the administrative groundwork before you expand into certifying titles, and the Kit + Ebook Pack at €347 combines both to build an organisation ready to hold multiple certifications.