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During its sixth meeting held in Split on the 19 June, the Lisbon recognition convention Committee adopted a new subsidiarity text on “The use of Qualifications Framework in the recognition of foreign qualifications”. The development of national qualifications frameworks provides a new tool for transparency and comparability for the recognition of qualifications. This new text takes notes of this situation and indicates general guidelines for their use.
Explanatory memorandum.
Preamble
The Preamble builds on the existing legal framework for the recognition of qualifications concerning higher education, as elaborated by the Council of Europe and UNESCO. It places the Recommendation in the context of the Council of Europe/UNESCO Recognition Convention and the European Higher Education Area and points to the main developments that call for a common understanding on how to use qualifications frameworks in the recognition of foreign qualifications. Specific attention is drawn to other parties or entities developing qualifications frameworks especially in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), and the European Qualifications Framework for lifelong learning (EQF LLL)¹ and to qualifications frameworks developed or being developed in countries party to the Lisbon Recognition Convention outside the European Higher Education Area. Read the Explanatory memorandum.

Different European language communities speaking with one voice.
The Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity (NPLD) is a pan-European network created with the support of the European Commission and led by different state and regional governments comprising universities, associations and NGO’s working in the field of language policy and planning for Constitutional, Regional and Small-State Languages (CRSS) across Europe.
The NPLD works to raise awareness at a European level on the positive aspects of linguistic diversity, to portray languages as an opportunity for the personal, social and economic development of Europe and to exchange best practices among policy makers, practitioners, researchers and experts across Europe.
The NPLD includes a broad range of languages – from official EU languages such as Estonian, Irish, Swedish or Finnish – to languages with official statuts in their territories such as Basque, Catalan, Galician, Welsh, Frisian and other language communities without official recognition but highly vibrant such as Breton, Corsican, Occitan, Cornish or Sami, among others.
The NPLD is open to all CRSS language communities, including public bodies, institutions, associations, universities, and civil society working in the field of linguistic diversity and multilingualism across Europe. For more information, visit the NPLD’s website

The University of Naples "L'Orientale" invites researchers and scholars to submit proposals for individual papers on the theme "Language and Diversity Discourse".
The Conference, scheduled on 10-12 October 2013 in Naples, will prompt a reflection on:

Under the patronage of UNESCO, the 19^th European Symposium on Languages for Special Purposes (LSP2013) will be held at the Centre for Translation Studies of the University of Vienna, from 8th to 10th of July 2013.
The three-day international event will focus on Languages for Special Purposes in a Multilingual, Transcultural world and will feature three keynote presentations.
The Symposium will offer parallel tracks on domain-specific languages, professional communication, theoretical and methodological issues of research and training, terminologies, specialized translation and socio-cultural issues of LSPs. The Symposium will also include a Forum for Early-Stage Researchers, allowing graduate students, post-docs and junior researchers to discuss their research and methodology with distinguished senior researchers.
For more information or to register (deadline: 30th June 2013) for the Symposium, please visit the website.

Cafébabel is a public forum which firmly gives the floor to actors in the civil society and the ‘eurogeneration’ – a term coined to recognise the first generation of mobile, internet-savvy European citizens. Above all, cafébabel is an innovator in the field of participatory journalism, and in encouraging contributors to express themselves in their native tongue.
cafébabelwas founded in 2001 by Erasmus exchange programme students. The idea was to cross linguistic and national borders in Europe by using the rising star of the internet as a vector of that expression.
Based on the principle of participatory journalism, today the network comprises over 16, 000 registered members. Up to1, 500 contributors and 20 ‘local offices’ write about Europe as they see it – be it through the prisms of society, culture, lifestyle or politics. cafébabel gives young journalists and citizen journalists the floor to express themselves.
It’s a testament to the work of its volunteer contributors that cafébabelis simultaneously translated into six languages – French, English, German, Italian, Spanish and Polish. Read more...

Greek is one of the less widely taught languages in Europe. However, many European languages include words of Greek origin, resulting in many Europeans (but also people from all around the world) wanting to learn Greek, to better understand and appreciate their own languages as well as learning one of the most ancient. Some of these learners reach advanced level in Greek and so the GLOSSA project was developed to support these language learners who wish to continue learning Greek and do not have either suitable learning materials and resources or the chance to visit Greece.
GLOSSA is unique in that it has developed an online multimedia course for levels C1 and C2, as well as two educational methodologies, one for the development of e-learning content for languages at an advanced level, and one for self-learning using an on-line environment. In addition a common European professional profile for language teachers has also been created, which is transferable to other languages, plus an accreditation tool has been adapted in order to promote the certification and validation of language teaching skills in non-formal and informal environments. Two books are available and published in both hard copy and electronic form.
The course, which has been developed with the support of the Lifelong Learning Programme (Key Activity 2: Languages), has attracted participants from 29 different countries from all over the world. The partners, all experienced in teaching languages, have enjoyed working together and have already developed a new idea for the continuation of the project.
The GLOSSA online advanced level Greek language courses are offered twice a year (the next courses will start in September 2013) and registrations are open for everyone who has a B2 level knowledge of the Greek language. The courses are offered at a low cost and include synchronous and asynchronous learning practice.
For more information about GLOSSA, you can visit the website or send an e-mail to: euprograms@action.gr

On 24th September 2013, the international conference on “Motivation in language education” will be held at the University of Warsaw.
It is organized by the Polish LLP NA Foundation for the Development of the Education System, Representation of the European Commission, EUNIC, Ministry of National Education, University of Warsaw in cooperation with European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) as a part of a series of events organized in Warsaw in order to celebrate the European Day of Languages.
The conference is addressed to experts responsible for shaping language policy, neurolinguists, representatives of education institutions, researchers, teachers, social partners. The conference will provide them with the possibility to discuss the following issues:

This article presents statistics on tertiary education in the European Union (EU). Tertiary education – provided by universities and other higher education institutions – is the level of education following secondary schooling. Higher education plays an essential role in society, creating new knowledge, transferring knowledge to students and fostering innovation; some European universities are among the most prestigious in the world.
Since the introduction of the Bologna process (see the article on education and training introduced) a major expansion in higher education systems has taken place, accompanied by significant reforms in degree structures and quality assurance systems. However, the financial and economic crisis has affected higher education in different ways, with some countries investing more and others making radical cutbacks in their education spending.
Main statistical findings
The EU-27 had around 4 000 higher education (undergraduate and postgraduate) institutions, with almost 20 million students in 2010 (see Table 1). Four Member States reported more than 2 million tertiary students in 2010, namely Germany (note the data for this country excludes students enrolled at ISCED level 6), the United Kingdom, France and Poland; tertiary student numbers in Italy and Spain were just below this level and together these six countries accounted for two thirds of all EU-27 students in tertiary education. Romania was the only other Member State to record at least one million tertiary students in 2010.
Across the EU-27, just over one third (34.0 %) of the students in tertiary education were studying social sciences, business or law, with more female (3.9 million) than male (2.8 million) students in this field of education, as shown in Figure 1. The second largest number of students by field of education was in engineering, manufacturing and construction-related studies which accounted for 13.6 % of all students in tertiary education; three quarters of the students in this field were male.
The median age of students in tertiary education can be influenced by a number of factors: whether students postpone starting tertiary education either by choice (for example, by taking a break or a gap year between secondary and tertiary education) or obligation (for example, for military service); the length of the tertiary education courses studied; or the extent to which mature students return to tertiary education later in life. In 2010, the median age of students in tertiary education ranged from 20.3 in Ireland to 22.5 in Spain, with the Nordic countries of Sweden, Denmark and Finland, as well as Austria, Luxembourg, Greece and Germany above this range (see Figure 2); note that the German figure was above the EU-27 average of 22.1 years, even though the data exclude those students enrolled at ISCED level 6.
The strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training that was adopted in May 2009 set a number of benchmarks, including one for tertiary education, namely that by 2020 the proportion of 30- to 34-year-olds with tertiary educational attainment should be at least 40 %. Just over one third (34.6 %) of the population aged 30 to 34 in the EU-27 had a tertiary education in 2011, rising to almost four out of ten (38.5 %) among women, and falling to just over three out of ten (30.8 %) among men (see Figure 3). In Ireland, Luxembourg, Sweden and the United Kingdom, the proportion of 30- to 34-year-old men and women with tertiary educational attainment was already 40 % or more in 2011; this was also the case in Norway and Switzerland. In contrast, less than 20 % of men in this age range had a tertiary education in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Italy, as was also the case in Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey (where the proportion of women having a tertiary educational attainment was also below 20 %).
Almost 4.5 million students graduated from tertiary education establishments in the EU-27 in 2010. An analysis of the number of graduates by field of education shows that 35.7 % had studied social sciences, business and law; this share was higher than the equivalent share (34.0 %) of tertiary education students still in the process of studying within this field, suggesting that less students had started this type of study in recent years, or that drop-out rates were higher in other fields. A similar situation was observed for health and welfare, which made up 15.1 % of graduates from 13.6 % of the tertiary student population, as well as the smaller field of services studies. The reverse situation was observed for the other fields of education shown in Figures 1 and 4, most notably for engineering, manufacturing and construction-related studies.
Within the EU-27, female graduates outnumbered male graduates by a ratio of approximately three to two; this ratio reached three to one for health and welfare fields of education (see Figure 4). Male graduates outnumbered female graduates slightly in agriculture and veterinary fields, more so in science, mathematics and computing fields, and by close to three to one in engineering, manufacturing and construction-related fields. Read more...