Characteristics of candidates for veterinary assistants

Young people wishing to train as veterinary assistants must meet requirements with respect to age limit, prior education and sometimes professional experience.

The following table sums up the requirements for candidates wishing to train as veterinary assistants.

Candidates for veterinary assistants must meet the age requirement at the time of their application. In the majority of countries studied, this is the age of criminal responsibility or school leaving age. From the point of view of age limit for candidates, Eastern European countries stand out as having either a low age limit, such as Romania (14 years) and Slovenia (15 years) or a high age limit as in Slovakia where young people must be 26 years old in order to apply. This can be explained by the fact that in Slovakia, 2 years professional experience are required before applying.

The profile of candidates in terms of sex ratio shows that the vast majority are young women in most of the countries studied. Nevertheless, the percentage of men is above 30% in countries like Romania, Slovakia, Portugal and Slovenia.

Prior training is required for candidates in most of the countries studied, except in Spain where veterinary nursing training is not officially recognised and Romania where it does not exist.

Candidates must have a diploma or have reached a certain level of schooling, ISCED 2, which corresponds to the legal school leaving age, or ISCED 3, which corresponds roughly to 6th form education. The required diploma is usually a professional one, for example in France the BEP or a general one, for example in the United Kingdom GCSEs.

It can be concluded that the requirements for candidates are similar if not identical. These depend particularly on the profile of training for veterinary assistants in the national education system.