Formation Continue du Supérieur

The European Union has 23 official and working languages. They are: Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish.
The first Community Regulation determining official languages was passed in 1958. It specified Dutch, French, German and Italian as the first official and working languages of the EU, these being the languages of the Member States at that time. Since then, as more countries have become part of the EU, the number of official and working languages has increased. However, there are fewer official languages than Member States, as some share common languages. In Belgium, for example, the official languages are Dutch, French and German, whilst in Cyprus the majority of the population speaks Greek, which has official status.
There are two main entitlements for languages with “official and working” status:
- documents may be sent to EU institutions and a reply received in any of these languages
- EU regulations and other legislative documents are published in the official and working languages, as is the Official Journal
Due to time and budgetary constraints, relatively few working documents are translated into all languages. The European Commission employs English, French and German in general as procedural languages, whereas the European Parliament provides translation into different languages according to the needs of its Members. More info: Official languages and other facts about European countries.

Le renouvellement du programme d'éducation et de formation tout au long de la vie est en cours de discussion au Parlement européen. Un nouveau programme Erasmus pour tous, plus ambitieux, plus démocratique élargira le programme Erasmus à tous les publics avec des allocations de mobilité plus importantes. Suivez la préparation du nouveau programme.
Erasmus pour tous: cinq millions de bénéficiaires potentiels
Jusqu'à cinq millions de personnes (soit presque deux fois plus qu'actuellement) pourraient bientôt avoir la chance d'aller étudier ou suivre une formation à l'étranger grâce à une bourse d'Erasmus pour tous, le nouveau programme de l'UE pour l'éducation, la formation, la jeunesse et le sport proposé par la Commission européenne dès le 23 novembre 2011. Quelques 3 millions d'entre elles seraient des étudiants de l'enseignement supérieur et de l'enseignement professionnel. Les étudiants de master bénéficieraient également d'un nouveau mécanisme de garantie de prêts créé en partenariat avec le groupe de la Banque européenne d'investissement. Ce programme Erasmus pour tous, d'une durée de sept ans prévoit une augmentation significative du budget pour le porter à 19 milliards d'euros, pour la période 2014-2020.
Prochaines étapes:

• adoption du programme courant 2013 sous présidence de l'Union européenne irlandaise (1er semestre 2013)

• d'un point de vue opérationnel, pour les établissements d'enseignement supérieur: lancement de l'appel d'offres pour les chartes Erasmus en février 2013 (sous réserve)

Suivez l'actualité sur le site de la Commission européenne. Sur Penelope: informations pratiques sur le programme 2014 - 2020.

Following the successful involvement of UK universities and colleges in the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, HEFCE has commissioned Podium, the Further and Higher Education Unit for the Olympic Games to help universities and colleges build on their 2012 experience by making their expertise available to other major events.
The contribution of higher education institutions (HEIs) to the Games was recognised as important and wide-reaching, with 94 per cent of the higher education sector involved in at least one Olympic-related project. These included providing student volunteers, playing host to national teams, undertaking groundbreaking research, and continuing programmes of investment towards London 2012’s legacy of sport and community engagement. More about Podium.

(Dublin, Ireland) Young people with health problems or disabilities are currently being missed by both employment policy and practice. Eurofound argues in a new report on active inclusion of young people with health problems or disabilities that there is a need and opportunity to bring these young people into focus. There are good practices across the European Union, that include flexible benefits, promotion of better school-to-work transitions and taking a pathways-to-employment approach. However, until now public policies have not given enough support to implementation of this positive and pro-active approach. The report will be presented at a joint international conference with the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment in The Hague, The Netherlands, on 17 January 2013.
Nearly all Member States are experiencing with high levels of unemployment and economic inactivity amongst young people. Even before the onset of the crisis there were increasing numbers of young people with health problems or disability who very often due to mental health problems, in large numbers, were entering into disability or social assistance schemes A number of countries have been paying more attention to this group (including Norway, the UK, Denmark, Finland and most of all the Netherlands where the dramatic increase was quite evident because of a separate benefit scheme for youngsters). More information is available at http://bit.ly/actincl13.

Europe is undergoing substantial demographic and technological changes, and will have to adapt its higher education system as a result. Methods for recognising prior learning (RPL) are becoming increasingly important, and will need to be compatible across national boundaries.
Against this backdrop, the European Association of Institutions in Higher Education (EURASHE), in co-operation with the European RPL Network (ERPLN), the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MŠMT) and the Czech Association of Schools of Professional Higher Education (CASPHE), organised the EURASHE Annual Lifelong Learning Seminar on RPL, 13-14 December 2012 in Prague. The title of the seminar was RPL: Flexible Ties within Higher Education, and attracted over 50 international participants from universities, as well as Czech and European organisations.
Mr Jin Yang, Senior Programme Specialist at UIL, spoke on the relevance of  UNESCO’s Guidelines on Recognition, Validation and Accreditation (RVA) of the Outcomes of Non-formal and Informal Learning to higher education. His talk focused on the principles and concrete mechanisms  necessary for integrating RVA into higher education policy. The aim of the conference was to

• Raise awareness of the importance of RPL among stakeholders
• Discuss methods of incorporating RPL into policy,
• Build partnerships within EURASHE and the European RPL network

In summary, the Seminar showed that RPL has been widely accepted in higher education systems of Europe, but challenges remain. Key quality issues discussed in the seminar include developing appropriate assessment criteria to take into account the wide range of prior learning, guidance and counselling of lifelong learners, and the accountability of recognition authorities. More information on the seminar. Read an abstract of Mr Yang’s speech.

I’m currently taking a MOOC called Computing for Data Analysis through Coursera. Ths is my fourth MOOC (the sixth one, if you count the two that I started and then dropped). It’s an introduction to the open-source statistical computing environment known as “R”. I got interested in R after learning about this modeling-based Calculus project that uses the statistical and plotting capabilities of R as well as some special symbolic packages as the centerpiece of introductory calculus. I’m leading a taskforce in my department to draft a plan for technology use in the Calculus sequence, and while I don’t think we’ll be using R, I like very much the spirit behind this calculus project, which puts programming at the heart of learning the subject and uses an open-source platform. Plus, I thought R might come in handy for analyzing my own data, and anyway, it’s free, and the course description says it only requires 3–5 hours a week. So why not? Read more...

Sur le blog de Michel Abhervé pour Alternatives économiques.La situation de l’AFPA s’éclaircit, avec les annonces  attendues (voir AFPA: il faut passer des déclarations aux actes) du premier ministre, Jean-Marc Ayrault, lors de sa visite au centre AFPA de Caen lundi 14 janvier. On pouvait s’y attendre car on voyait mal comment la priorité à l’emploi fortement affirmée par le gouvernement aurait pu être compatible avec un démantèlement de l’AFPA.
Les mesures annoncées vont dans le bon sens, même si il reste encore à faire pour inscrire le redressement dans la durée. Elles vont permettre de traiter la question du statut de cet organisme, question que nous avons abordée à plusieurs reprises dans ce blog (voir Formation professionnelle: pour la développer, il faudrait une offre en bon état. Nous en sommes loin, Comment sortir de la crise de l’AFPA? et Pour le Conseil d’Etat, l’AFPA est une agence de l’Etat, et ne doit plus être une association). Le point de vue du Conseil d’Etat est particulièrement clair: il cite explicitement l’AFPA dans les agences d’Etat, et estime qu’il ne faut pas recourir au statut associatif. Suite de l'article...

Sur le blog de Michel Abhervé pour Alternatives économiques.Isabelle Le Callennec, députée UMP d’Ille et Vilaine a succédé à Pierre Méhaignerie, qui ne se représentait pas après 39 ans de mandat (voir Pierre Méhaignerie ne se représentera pas. Qui seront les plus anciens députés en juin?). En continuité des engagements de celui-ci, elle manifeste son intérêt très vif pour les Maisons de l’Emploi en général, et celle de Vitré en particulier (voir A Vitré, une Maison de l’emploi dans un bassin de plein emploi et Le candidat Sarkozy a visité une Maison de l’Emploi, ou l’ombre de Jean-Louis Borloo sur Pierre Méhaignerie) et a posé à ce sujet une question écrite. Et, pour le moment, il semble que le gouvernement manifeste un réel respect pour les parlementaires en répondant dans des délais acceptables à leurs questions, ce qui est un vrai changement (voir, entre autres Roselyne Bachelot, François Baroin et Claude Guéant champions du mépris des parlementaires et Presque cinq ans pour répondre à une question d’un Député!). Pourvu que ça dure! Suite de l'article...