Meeting of Directors General for Higher Education. 22.04.2013 - 23.04.2013. O'Reilly Hall, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4.
The aim of this meeting is to give the Directors General for Higher Education from all Member States an opportunity to debate current topics on the European education agenda and share best practices. Overarching focus of meeting will be Regional Engagement. Expected participants are Directors-General responsible for higher education, representatives from rectors’ conferences and the European Commission.
For more information visit the Department of Education and Skills Website.

Dublin Castle 2 Palace Street, Dublin 2, Co. Dublin. 14.03.2013 - 15.03.2013.
Biannual meeting of Bologna Follow Up Group - the group charged with overseeing the implementation of reforms agreed by European Ministers of Higher Education. Expected participants include Government representatives and representatives of higher education stakeholders including students, staff, institutions, business and the European Commission. Meeting of the Bologna follow-up group.

This conference will discuss how local and regional authorities can improve education and respond to the need for more flexible careers, contributing this way to Europe's growth strategy.

The European Union is committed to reach an employment level of 75% of its workforce by 2020 (68.6% in 2011). In Europe, currently more than 23 million people are looking for a job. With the "Agenda for new skills and jobs", one of the seven Flagship Initiatives of the Europe 2020 strategy, the EU and the member states are stepping up labour market reforms, join forces to equip people with the right skills, attempt to improve working conditions and encourage the creation of new jobs.

European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network (ELGPN) 12th Plenary Meeting
The European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network aims to assist the European Union Member States (and the neighbouring countries eligible for the EU Lifelong Learning Programme) and the European Commission in developing European co-operation on lifelong guidance in both the education and the employment sectors. Its purpose is to promote co-operation at Member State level in implementing the priorities identified in the EU Resolutions on Lifelong Guidance. A meeting of the ELGPN is held every six months to discuss and continue the agreed working plan. At this meeting, the ELGPN will begin the next phase and new Work Programme 2013-2014. The meeting will consist of plenary sessions and parallel working groups. European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network (ELGPN) 12th Plenary Meeting.
A meeting of the European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network (ELGPN) is held every six months to discuss and continue the agreed working plan of the ELGPN. At this meeting, the ELGPN will begin the next phase and new Work Programme 2013-2014. The meeting will consist of plenary sessions and parallel working groups.

Europe's cities and regions have called on EU ministers to swiftly agree to plans to guarantee all young people up to 30 years old quality employment, education or training opportunities to boost growth and avoid creating a "lost generation". They stress that a lack of investment and proper local and regional authority involvement could seriously jeopardise the scheme’s success.
Europe's cities and regions have called on EU ministers to swiftly agree to plans to guarantee all young people up to 30 years old quality employment, education or training opportunities to boost growth and avoid creating a "lost generation". They stress that a lack of investment and proper local and regional authority involvement could seriously jeopardise the scheme’s success.
The EU's Committee of the Regions (CoR) has backed plans to offer a "Youth Guarantee" for all young Europeans which will be co-financed by EU cohesion funds. With unemployment among young people in Europe standing at 5.7 million, the European Commission was asked by the Council to propose a Youth Employment Package which included a recommendation to introduce a Youth Guarantee - an assurance that no young person up to the age of 25 will be left without employment, training or education for more than four months. Read more...

Between 15% and 20% of students who participate in a mini-company programme in secondary school will later start their own company, a figure that is about three to six times of that of the general population. Investing in education for entrepreneurship is one of the highest return investments policy-makers in Europe can make to support growth and business creation. Yet, according to a recent Eurobarometer Entrepreneurship survey three quarters of Europeans say that they have never taken part in an entrepreneurship course. The acquisition of entrepreneurial abilities also enhances the employability of our youth: according to recent research, 78% of entrepreneurship education alumni were employed directly after graduating at university, against 59 % of a control group of higher education students.
Today in Bologna at the fourth meeting of EU SME envoys, European Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani, Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship, presented recent Commission projects on educating the educators (see below). The SME envoys also discussed with VP Tajani and EU SME envoy Daniel Calleja Crespo the Entrepreneurship Action Plan launched in January, which contains initiatives for entrepreneurial education and training. Read more...

VET-Alert - Just published on Vocational Education and Training - February 2013 issue

• VETAlert - no 2 - February 2013 PDF  Current issue
• VETAlert - no 1 - January 2013 PDF.

The unemployment rate in the EU has peaked at 10.5% (higher than in 2008 by 3.4 percentage points). But between 2010 and 2012 it grew less, with some countries reporting stable or even declining trends. VET policies play an important role for social inclusion and employability. This role becomes even more important in the current economic downturn.
Data presented here consider unemployment rates at different points in time. The indicator of change is the difference (expressed in percentage points) between levels of unemployment rates at different points in time. A positive value indicates that the unemployment rate has gone up in the period considered. A negative value indicates that unemployment has decreased. Read more...

By Inge Ignatia de Waard. MOOCs are getting everyone excited. While most of the discussions focus on the impact of MOOCs on Higher Education, the focus of the presentation below will be on the effect of mobile accessibility on learner interactions, as well as overall description of the MobiMOOC case (a MOOC course on mobile learning).
The presentation will be shown and discussed during the upcoming UNESCO mobile learning week in Paris, France and a short description of the presentation can be found here. The mLearning week will get a lot of good people together to analyse mobile learning across the globe and see where we can be heading to ensure education for all (or at least increase educational access). If you want to follow what is happening during the mLearning week, you can also follow the #mlw2013 hashtag.
There will also be some online webinars that are open to all, so if you cannot make it to Paris, make sure you log on to the webinars (look at the right menubar once the link of the webinar opens for more information).

Since I do write about MOOCs a lot here, it would be disingenuous of me not to report on the Coursera MOOC that got pulled, especially since it was from Georgia Tech. I think this is an example that proves MOOCs are still experiments. This would be a much worse story if this was a required course, or one that students had paid tuition for.
The course got off to a bad start; one student reported that the first e-mail he got from the instructor “was not an introduction to the course per se, nor instructions for getting started, but rather an apology for the technical glitches that were, unbeknownst to me, already occurring.” Read more...