Brussels, 29/04/2009 (Agence Europe) - Meeting in the “Bologna Summit” in Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium) on 28-29 April, the minsters with responsibility for higher education in the 46 European members of the Bologna Process restated their support for a European higher education area and repeated their will to work towards this end. The aim of the “Bologna Summit” was to take stock of the first 10 years and to set priorities for the next decade so that the Process fits the reality on the ground. For the first time, the summit was open to foreign countries, such as Canada, Australia, China and Brazil. These took part in discussions as invited guests, enhancing dialogue with Europe; they will not, however, become members of the Process. The conference closed with the adoption of an official communiqué.
Ministers acknowledged that the objectives set in 1999 at the launch of the Process have not all been achieved in terms of mobility, training and harmonisation of certification. Education, Training, Culture and Youth Commissioner Jan Figel' said that student mobility and lifelong learning would clearly be the priorities for the continuing Bologna Process, as ministers stated in the communiqué. Being able to be involved in learning and training at every stage in one's life should become the norm and every higher education establishment should be able to offer training to most age groups of the population, Figel' said. He also urged the governments of participating countries not to scrimp on education and research, and argued for opening up to other countries. He spoke, too, of the need for a new system of classification for greater transparency in training and education in Europe and said that there should be a guarantee of quality externally monitored.
The communiqué puts the social dimension of higher education at the top of the priorities, along with wider access, equal opportunities and ensuring the quality and consistency of qualifications. Participating countries should cooperate more closely on lifelong learning so that their citizens can continue learning and adding to their knowledge by means of as many channels as possible. Strong partnerships such as are instanced by the European University Association (EUA) in its Charter on Lifelong Learning, were presented at the same time as a series of key messages during the conference (see EUROPE 9882). On mobility, the communiqué sets a target by 2020 of one fifth of students graduating having had a study or training period abroad. With the prospect of wider access to and participation in higher education, public funding remains of the highest priority, the communiqué says. The next ministerial meeting will take place in Bucharest on 27-28 April 2012.
On the occasion of the ministerial conference, the Eurydice information network on education in Europe published a report, Higher Education in EUROPE 2009: Developments in the Bologna Process. The report focuses on a few priority topics related to the emerging European Higher Education Area, in particular the Bachelor-Master degree structure, the European credit transfer systems (ECTS), diploma supplement, national qualifications frameworks and mobility and portability of financial support. Overall, substantial progress has been made in all the areas considered and European cooperation has visibly improved as a result of the Bologna Process, the report states. Higher education being dynamic and in constant change, the reform process raised fresh challenges and requires ever closer cooperation among European countries In particular, follow-up mechanisms needed for assessing the impact of the reforms have to be improved. While great progress has been made in terms of structural reform, the focus of attention and cooperation must now seek to combine national policy-making and system development with the content and reality of implementation in higher education institutions, the report says. “This report clearly shows that we are on track to achieve the central objective of creating a European Higher Education Area by 2010. Greater compatibility of the different national European education degree structures has been achieved through significant reforms, and now the challenge is to work on quality, namely the content and profile of qualifications to ensure that they are meaningful and relevant within and beyond national boundaries,” says Commissioner Figel' in the preface. Eurostat, the Statistics Office of the European Communities, has also published a report, The Bologna Process in higher education in Europe - Key indicators on the social dimension and mobility, bringing together a series of data on higher education in the European Union in 2007. The Economic Interpenetration column will provide a brief résumé of these data on Tuesday of next week. (I.L./transl.rt)