Policymakers face an unprecedented challenge in reversing Europe's sharp rise in unemployment and in devising policies that will build a dynamic and resilient labour market. Under the European Employment Strategy, employment is central to the European Semester process to promote closer policy coordination between Member State governments. The European Commission's Employment Package of April 2012 proposes measures to support job creation, restore the dynamics of labour markets and reinforce coordination and multilateral surveillance in employment policy. The package also supports the objectives of Europe's growth strategy Europe 2020. Eurofound provides facts, figures and analysis to inform the development of policy on employment and jobs in Europe. Read more...

This event is launched by the European University Association (EUA) in partnership with the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), the University of Duisburg-Essen, the University of Lisbon and the University of Zagreb.
The project wants to incentivize those in charge of managing quality processes at universities to take on the responsibility for quality. For that purpose, the idea is to develop and implement three training workshops with a practical approach to strengthening quality cultures and providing quality managers. These workshops will also give the opportunity to exchange experiences and build connections for future cooperation at European level as well as collect feedback, while exploring questions such as: How to build effective communication structures for engaging staff and students in quality culture? How to use staff development as a means for enhancing quality? How to connect QA to the decision-making processes at all levels? How to avoid hindering creativity at the university through bureaucratic QA processes?
The workshops will take place in Lisbon, Portugal on 8-10 April 2013, Zagreb, Croatia on 22-24 May 2013, and Essen, Germany on 26-28 June 2013.
More information about this event…

We invite you to submit your views on the topic of Reacting to change and transforming European Lifelong Learning: the contribution of ICT in addressing key concerns related to learning innovation, through the second VISIR consultation.
The European Union has set the objective to establish the strongest education system in the world by 2020, and ICT could be one of the levers to support the process of innovation of European learning systems. National governments in EU still struggle with a fragmented picture in terms of effective use of ICT for learning. Research in the field is progressing, good practices increase but a meaningful use of technology has not yet been achieved. There is a need for research to support policy makers at EU and national level in understanding how ICT can support educational innovation. A wide consensus is available that ICT has a potential to contribute to learning innovation, and the VISIR consortium feels the need to discuss how to do so.
In this survey, we would like to discuss how ICT can contribute to a set of key policy objectives, identified by the Stellar Network of Excellence in 2012.

• Cost reduction and effectiveness of learning
• Transferability of learning results across lifelong learning sectors and contexts
• Employability value of Education
• New assessment methods
• Scalability of innovation
• Learning attractiveness.

For these objectives, a set of options are provided on how ICT can contribute to achieve them.
You are kindly invited to give opinion on the options and to suggest further policy objectives how to do so.

Join the consultation to share your views!
The survey takes max. 15 minutes. Use the flags below to answer in your language:

    

Results of the first consultation
The theme was: “What are the most relevant factors of change and how do they affect LLL?”, and it run in June 2012, aiming to analyse trends on ICT and learning in Europe, the VISIR domains of change, polarities and tensions and the main lines of evolution, trying to outline future scenarios till 2020. You can download the 1st Consultation Executive Summary and the full 1st Consultation Paper. Stay tuned on the VISIR website to know about the publication of the second report!

Conference announcement: First Arab-Euro University Conference on Higher Education, Barcelona, Spain 30-31 May 2013
The University of Barcelona (UB), in collaboration with the Association of Arab Universities (AARU) and EUA, will organise the First Arab-Euro University Conference on Higher Education from 30 to 31 May 2013 in Barcelona, Spain. The conference, hosted by UB, will consider specific themes in Arab-European collaboration and compare recent higher education developments in both regions, including internationalisation.
The main topics to be discussed are the following:
    * Higher education development trends in Europe and the Arab World including:
    - comparability and equivalence of higher education systems: Bologna as an example;
    - employability: cultural, social and economic perspectives;
    - research and doctoral education;
    - internationalisation of higher education.
    * Towards enhanced higher education collaboration between Europe and the Arab World.
Participation in the conference is open to rectors, vice-chancellors and presidents of universities or to their delegates from both regions and will allow for networking as well as bilateral and multilateral meetings and the signature of collaboration agreements.
Please note that registration will commence in March 2013. Please direct any further enquiries or expressions of interest to participate to Carmen García (carmengarciam@ub.edu); or Zeineb Mazouz (zmazouz@ub.edu).

In which European country is the total amount of annual taught time for the 2012-2013 school year highest? How many hours do students spend on specific subjects, such as mathematics or natural sciences?
A new Eurydice publication on recommended annual taught time during compulsory education gives quick answers to these questions. More precisely, the publication contains annually updated facts and figures on the amount of time allocated to core subjects by grade/stage in full-time compulsory education. Information in the publication is divided into the amount of time allocated to individual subjects, such as literacy learning, mathematics, or physical education and also by country. The report also covers the number of taught days and weeks per year, as well as the number and length of the class periods.
The full report can be downloaded from the facts and figures area of the Eurydice network website: Recommended annual taught time in full-time compulsory education in Europe.

Outcomes of the Final Event of the ULAB
The Final Conference was entitled “Bridging Research and Innovation: The Role of European Universities”
Last 11 December 2012 took place in Brussels the Final Conference of the European Laboratory for modeling the technical research University of tomorrow (ULAB Project). The Project is an innovative think-tank created by five leading Technical and Research-intensive European Universities: Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain), Politecnico di Torino (Italy), Technische Universität München (Germany), University of Oxford (UK), Paris Institute of Technology (France).
The event gathered representatives from the European Commission, the European University Association (EUA), the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT), and the ULAB partner institutions.
For more information and presentations, follow this link.

EUA has this week published a new report on the Portuguese higher education system, which has been prepared by a team of European experts. This report was carried out at the request of the Portuguese Rectors’ Conference (CRUP), with a view to appraising the Portuguese HE system, identifying challenges and making recommendations. It was presented on Tuesday (19 February) at a special event held at the National Council for Education (Conselho Nacional de Educação) in Lisbon. The Portuguese Secretary of State for Higher Education was in attendance, as was the Deputy Director-General of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Education and Culture. The audience of 100 included university rectors, polytechnic presidents, representatives of the quality assurance and research funding agencies, and teacher and student unions. The event received substantial press coverage.
The team’s presentation was followed up by overviews, provided by Portuguese specialists, of the latest developments in national quality assurance provision, knowledge transfer and regional development. The expert report focuses on two issues which have been the object of discussion for some time, but which the recent international rescue package and its attendant austerity measures have brought to the fore: the re-structuring of the higher education (HE) system and the rationalisation of the national course portfolio. Read more...

ENQA has recently obtained funding for a LLP/Erasmus proposal. The two-year project started on 1 October and will end on 30 September 2014. The project, entitled “Transparency of European higher education through public quality assurance reports” (EQArep), aims at developing European standards for quality assurance reports.
The consortium of the project includes ENQA (as applicant and coordinator), the Swiss Center of Accreditation and Quality Assurance in HE (OAQ), the Irish Universities Quality Board (IUQB), the Agency for Science and Higher Education (ASHE) and the Estonian Higher Education Quality Agency (EKKA).
The project will map the current publication practices, explore the different needs of stakeholders for transparent and comparable information, develop standards for different types of quality assurance reports in the EHEA and evaluate whether a European template for quality assurance reports is feasible.
The project will result in a recommendation to quality assurance agencies on the content and form of informative and approachable quality assurance reports. Thus the envisaged impact is a higher degree of comparability of quality assurance reports and consequently a better contribution of quality assurance to transparency of higher education at the European level.

European Day of Languages
Every year, 26 September is the day we celebrate Europe’s rich linguistic heritage – the EU’s 23 official languages, the 60 or so regional/minority languages, and the languages spoken by people who’ve come to Europe from other parts of the world.

ENQA has recently obtained funding for a LLP/Erasmus proposal. The two-year project started on 1 October and will end on 30 September 2014. The project, entitled “Transparency of European higher education through public quality assurance reports” (EQArep), aims at developing European standards for quality assurance reports.
The consortium of the project includes ENQA (as applicant and coordinator), the Swiss Center of Accreditation and Quality Assurance in HE (OAQ), the Irish Universities Quality Board (IUQB), the Agency for Science and Higher Education (ASHE) and the Estonian Higher Education Quality Agency (EKKA).
The project will map the current publication practices, explore the different needs of stakeholders for transparent and comparable information, develop standards for different types of quality assurance reports in the EHEA and evaluate whether a European template for quality assurance reports is feasible.
The project will result in a recommendation to quality assurance agencies on the content and form of informative and approachable quality assurance reports. Thus the envisaged impact is a higher degree of comparability of quality assurance reports and consequently a better contribution of quality assurance to transparency of higher education at the European level.