- Equity in Higher Education
- Lisbon & Students
- Let's Go! Campaign
- Towards an EQF
- Student Centred Learning

Equity In Higher Education

The student body in all European countries excludes a great number of groups in society that have the capability to start and complete a degree in higher education. Through experiencing the barriers and/or direct and indirect discrimination, students are the obvious group to claim their place in this debate.

Increasing equal opportunities has always been a priority area of the student movement. In the twenty-five years that ESU has existed, a great knowledge library has been developed on this topic. By being active in institutional governance structures, national consultation structures and civil society in general, student unions have a direct influence on equity and efficiency policies. The project 'equity through e-learning' aims to train student representatives to help implement policies in order to increase equity and efficiency in their own higher education institutions and countries.

Existing and new research on increasing equity in higher education will be disseminated to all levels of student representation, on the national, institutional, faculty and programme levels. The project will also set up a European Student Trainer Network to train student representatives and will use an e-learning platform to create an innovative learning experience. The platform will be used as a preparation for, and as a follow-up to, the regional training sessions in order to help them develop national action plans for equity and efficiency in European higher education systems. The project is managed by ESU in cooperation with its member organisations in Romania, Austria and the Netherlands, all having long-standing experience in training and empowering student representatives.

The e-learning platform will be created in collaboration with Scienter, and the Menon Network will act as advisor to its development.

ESU is the lead partner and the coordinator of the project consortium formed by Scienter Italy, Student Higher Education Council of the Slovak Republic (SVRS), National Alliance of Romanian Student Organizations (ANOSR), Austrian National Union of Students, MENON NETWORK EEIG, Federation of Estonian Students Unions (EÜL).

Duration: October 2007 – December 2009

Results:

• A content package, consisting of research, findings and conclusions of the content team on equity issues from the students’ perspective, will be designed and provide support to the trainers' pool in order for them to be able to prepare the training sessions. The content package will also be made available on the website of the project for student unions, HE Stakeholders and other interested bodies.

• The e-learning platform will be the tool through which the users will be able to meet up, debate HE issues and partake of an e-learning training in order to gain expertise in the topic in question.

• The Student Conference on Equity and Efficiency in Higher Education will be an important event, because it will allow participants to debate the content that will later be introduced within the trainings. Thus, apart from acting as a means to get participants interested in the topic at hand and the trainings that will follow, this exercise is also a good quality assurance mechanism where the research and content produced will be actively challenged and debated in a live forum.

• The training for trainers’ event will prepare future trainers in terms of content, technical and pedagogy. It will consist of 3 days of training, divided into 5 modules. The entire set of modules will use a varied toolbox of non-formal and formal learning methods.

• Three regional trainings on equity topics, delivered by the trainers formed during the ToT.

• The project is being implemented with the financial support of the European Commission's DG Education and Culture - EACEA, as part of the Erasmus Programme.

Towards an EQF

For 18 months up until April 2008, ESU was coordinating a major European Commission-funded campaign centred around the European Qualifications Framework (EQF).  The EQF is an important European Union tool designed to transform higher education in Europe and promote more outcome-based education.  Specifically, it is designed to create greater transparency and comparability between different education systems, and thus to facilitate student and worker mobility across the EU. 

It is about repositioning the assessment of ‘knowledge achievement’ towards the skills, competences and attitudes of individuals rather than simply on the status of institutions and the title/level of qualifications received.  In this way, it represents a depreciation of the method of place of learning, and a consequent appreciation of the learning achieved, marking a shift from an analysis of the process to an analysis of the outcomes. The overarching goal is clear – for qualifications frameworks to narrow the gap between the worlds of education, learning and labour, and employment.

Implementation of the EQF at European level is entirely dependent on its delivery at the national level through National Qualifications Frameworks (NQFs).  This project was therefore aimed at a qualitative assessment of current progress, and at exploring the main debates and obstacles that continue to hinder the successful adoption and implementation of this framework in national contexts.  The methodology consisted of involving actors from all education sectors – a national union of students, a national union of school students, an employers association, a trade union and a higher education network – from five different countries.  These project partners were asked to lead a debate around the implementation of the EQF in their respective countries in two rounds of consultations and then to report back to the project.  The information gathered formed the backbone of the Validation Conference held in Slovenia from 21-22 April 2008, which brought together both the partners and other interested parties to draw out the main conclusions from the project.

The partners were as follows:

 

-Union of Students in Ireland (USI)

 

-Confederation of German Employers’ Associations (BDA)

 

-Association of Norwegian School Students (EON)

 

-Association University Ghent, Belgium (AUGent)

 

-Education, Science and Culture Trade Union, Slovenia (SVIZ)

Some of the key challenges that lie ahead can be summarised as follows:
1.    The need for a renewed credit system to support the recognition of prior non-formal and   informal learning.
2.    Encouraging the participation of the trade unions and employers in the process of establishing and implementing the European and National Qualifications Frameworks.
3.    Making Qualifications Frameworks useful to their users.
4.    Ensuring reliability and trust.
5.    Achieving broad ownership and awareness – there is a need to broaden the current concept of stakeholder groups to include all those with a stake in Europe’s educational future.  This also includes empowering stakeholders to contribute to the process to overcome financial and knowledge limitations which prevent many from participating meaningfully in the process. Greater awareness raising is also essential to overcome the barriers of technical language which also inhibits many stakeholders and the general public from engaging with the issue.
The full text of the Validation Conference report can be found here.

The project also consisted of an Advisory Board made up of the following organisations:

- EI, Education International Pan-European Structure

- ETUC, European Trade Union Confederation

- EUA, European University Association

- EURASHE, European Association of Institutions in Higher Education

- OBESSU, Organising Bureau of European School Student Unions

- UNICE, the Voice of Business in Europe

Links to a range of publications and presentations associated with the project can be found here:

Presentation - EQF stakeholder views and experiences

Presentation - Establishing national qualifications frameworks without stakeholders

Presentation - Making the NQF useful for learners

Presentation - Learning Outcomes in the QF

Report from the EQF Validation Conference

The full text of the Final Report: The European Qualifications Framework from a Stakeholders' Perspective can be found here.

The individual national case study reports are also available here:

National report 1 - Belgium

National report 2 - Belgium

National report 1 - Norway

National report 2 - Norway

National report 1 - Slovenia

National report 2 - Slovenia

National reports 1 and 2 -Ireland

 

Lisbon & Students

Since 2000, ESU has been engaged in activities the European Commission undertook in the field of higher education under the header of the Lisbon Strategy. ESU has participated in the consultation process on the ‘Role of Universities in the Europe of Knowledge’, in several working groups followed up by the “Wim Kok midterm review”, in the consultation sessions on the European Institute of Technology and more recently in EU presidency events discussing the main communications to the Parliament and Council.

In Hampton Court, the Lisbon Strategy gained an increased momentum on reform, touching the systems we study in. The 11th European Student Convention in Vienna, March, 2006 launched a call to ministers for ESU to become a full partner in the European Union’s Education and Training 2010 work programme. Since action speaks louder than words, ESU filed an application for a project called ‘Lisbon and Students’ in April 2006, which was approved the following August.

In summary, the project aimed to:

• Assess the impact of the reforms on students through a European wide survey – “Lisbon with Student Eyes”

• Inform national unions of students on the content of the reforms through information packages, a European conference and regional trainings.

• Draft regional and national contributions towards the reforms through three regional trainings

• Bring together student representatives, government representatives and the social partners to discuss the student contribution towards the Lisbon Strategy in a European conference.

The project thus comprised the following actions:

• A three day European wide conference on improving the students contribution to the Lisbon Strategy, concretely focused on the implementation of the education and training 2010 work programme. Under discussion will also be the links between the higher education and public and private partners, financial management of higher education institutions and employability of bachelor and sub-bachelor degrees.

• A survey called “Lisbon with student eyes”, researching the effects of the Lisbon Strategy on students and their higher education systems. This survey will give us an overview of the knowledge and understanding of the Lisbon Strategy within the national unions of students in Europe, and also the pace of implementation and the involvement of students within the reforms, both on the national and local level. This is a follow-up to the survey “Bologna with student eyes 2” which is being produced for the upcoming London ministerial summit and had been previously produced also for the Bergen ministerial summit.

• Three regional trainings on the effects of the Lisbon Strategy on higher education and cooperation between students, the ministries and social partners. These aim at shaping national action plans for national unions of students and peer learning activities on work on the Lisbon Strategy.

• Four meetings with the European institutions and social partners to facilitate the structural participation of ESU on the European level. These meetings gave ESU the opportunity to meet the European stakeholders within the Lisbon Strategy on a more structural basis, which will make the entire communication and progress within the implementation process move up a gear.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This article reflects the views only of the author, and the commission cannot be held reponsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

 

Let's go! Campaign

Mobility for all students and staff is far from being a reality in Europe today. Mobility has the potential to provide a strong impetus on higher quality education, by bringing more students and staff from different backgrounds together in the classroom. Also, while meant to be a fundamental building block for a European identity, only a small elite are enjoying the fruits of multicultural learning and development. In order to increase student and staff mobility, the needs of students and staff themselves must be taken into account. In order to increase mobility, the European Students’ Union in partnership with Educational International, is developing a campaign; “Let’s Go!”, an awareness campaign running from November 2007 to October 2008. Governments have underlined the importance of student and staff mobility in the Bologna Process and in other areas of work like Erasmus Mundus and the Lisbon strategy. The Bologna Declaration is firmly commited to this goal, following this up in later communiqués as recently as the one issued in London in 2007 Despite this, staff and students still experience substantial problems where mobility is concerned. Our Campaign aims at providing information on the benefits of mobility whilst pushing for the removal of barriers to mobility. The Campaign will motivate students and staff to go abroad and aims to convince higher education institutions and governments to overcome the obstacles to mobility. The Campaign is part of the official 2007-09 working program of the Bologna Follow-Up Group and has received funding from the European Commission. This means that it will be recognised as work feeding into the preparations for the next ministerial conference to be held in 2009 in the frame of the Bologna Process. It also means that there is funding for some of the campaign materials and activities in the project. The campaign will revolve around national activities such as debates, meetings with relevant authorities, articles, press releases and public demonstrations. Only our imagination set the limit for what we can do. On the European level we will create a project website including an interactive Wiki-style part where students and staff can exchange knowledge and mobility experiences. This will eventually it will serve as the grounding for identifying remaining concrete obstacles to mobility. We will create a template for campaign materials and support you with information and research regarding mobility. In order to formulate our demands we will create an online petition pinpointing our needs. The petition should also be distributed to national and European authorities. The campaign will come to an end with a Validation Conference to be held in Lille in France, October 2008. The results of the campaign will be discussed and fed into a report to the Bologna Follow-up Group and ministerial conference in Leuven 2009. An important feature of this campaign is that it will be carried out by both student unions and teacher trade unions. We have a common interest in making mobility possible and by joining forces we can only become stronger in our demands to solve mobility problems. This is a unique chance to show that we want to be mobile and we want a European Higher Education Area without barriers and borders.

 

 Student Centred Learning