EQF Stakeholder Project launched

On 11 and 12 January 2007, the first meetings of the Project Partners and the Advisory Board of the EQF Stakeholder Project were held in ESIB’s Brussels office. The partners and the Advisory Board discussed the national dialogues on the stakeholders’ experiences with the implementation of the European Qualifications Framework for Lifelong Learning (EQF-LLL) in the 5 countries participating in the project.

Throughout this year, the 5 national project partners will organise stakeholder meetings to discuss the impact of the EQF-LLL and the elaboration of national qualifications frameworks on the education systems in their countries.

Also, the relation and inter-operability of the EQF-LLL and the Qualifications Framework for the European Higher Education Area (QF-EHEA), which has been adopted by the Bologna ministers in 2005, will be a major issue tackled in the project.

The results of the national stakeholder dialogues will be merged together, to get a comparative overview and to identify common problems and solutions. A final conference of the project will be held in early 2008.

ESIB successfully applied as a coordinator, together with 5 national partners, for a project grant under the Leonardo da Vinci programme of the European Commission. The 5 partners are:

– AUGent, Ghent University Association (Belgium Flanders)

– BDA, Confederation of German Employers’ Associations (Germany)

– EON, Association of Norwegian School Students (Norway)

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

– USI, Union of Students in Ireland (Ireland)

– 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