The automatic recognition of higher education, secondary education and training qualifications in the EU continues... But there is still more to be done, says the European Commission.
While EU countries made a commitment in a 2018 EU Council recommendation to introduce automatic recognition by 2025, the European Commission has identified a series of challenges in a report that was published on Thursday 23 February.
These challenges, it notes, are particularly linked to diversity within decision-making processes for granting recognition in Member States. This is because the decisions are usually left to the educational institutions and are not monitored or evaluated. On the contrary, delegating them to a system-level body would make it possible to achieve a less fragmented system without compromising the autonomy of institutions. Similarly, the European Commission is calling for further investigation into the use of digital tools for recognition, including the development of the Europass platform.
Furthermore, the European Commission has noted that there is confusion surrounding the notion of automatic recognition. For example, institutions confuse the idea of being able to access higher education in a given system, with meeting the requirements to access a specific programme. The Commission is therefore calling for better use of the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS).
Finally, the institution has noted the limited use of learning agreements between educational institutions in different Member States outside the Erasmus+ programme. The Commission has also particularly emphasised the need to improve recognition of exchanges abroad in secondary education and vocational training.
The automatic recognition of diplomas is a cornerstone of the European Education Area (EEA) and is closely linked to issues of learning mobility. It is also one of the priorities of the Swedish Presidency of the EU Council in the field of education (see EUROPE 13115/16).
To read the report: https://aeur.eu/f/5h0 (Original version in French by Hélène Seynaeve)