Brendan McGahon
Question:170 Mr. McGahon asked the Minister for Education and Science the progress being made on the Bologna Declaration. [22940/01]
Written Answers. - Bologna Declaration.
The joint declaration of the European Ministers of Education convened in Bologna in June 1999, which was signed by 29 countries, is a commitment to establish the European area of higher education and to promote the European system of higher education in a global context. The goals of the declaration are to increase the competitiveness of European higher education and to increase mobility and employability within the European area. Recognising the fundamental principles of autonomy and diversity, the establishment of the European area of higher education will be achieved by greater compatibility and comparability of the European systems of higher education.
The declaration commits the signatories to engage in co-ordinating their policies to achieve the following objectives within the first decade of the third millennium adoption of a system of easily readable and comparable degrees; adoption of a system based on two main cycles, undergraduate and graduate; establishment of a system of credit accumulation and transfer – such as in the ECTS system – to promote student mobility; promotion of mobility of students and teachers; co-operation in quality assurance; and promotion of the necessary European dimensions in higher education.
European Ministers in charge of higher education, representing 32 signatories, met in Prague on 18 and 19 May 2001 in order to review the progress achieved in relation to the Bologna Declaration and to set directions and priorities for the coming years of the process. The Ministers reaffirmed their commitment to the objective of establishing a European higher education area by 2010.
The twin principles of institutional autonomy and diversity emphasised in the Bologna Declaration and the Prague Communiqué are well developed in Ireland where our higher education institutions, along with their European counterparts, will be active participants in the achievements of the broad objectives of the declaration. Our higher education system is based on the binary system with complementary roles for the university sector and the technological sector. The diversity of institutions and the separate missions of the two broad sectors will be maintained so as to ensure maximum flexibility and responsiveness to the needs of students and to the wide variety of social and economic requirements.
A steering group representative of all the relevant interests has been established to assist in the formulation of our priorities, in the follow-up to the Bologna Declaration and the Prague conference of Ministers. In that context a national conference on the Bologna Declaration was held on 9 May 2001 and involved all partners in higher education and the wider social partnership.
The steering group is currently drawing up a questionnaire for distribution to all third level institutions to evaluate the position of each institution vis-à-vis the goals set out in the Bologna Declaration, to identify issues arising and to disseminate information on the Bologna Declaration.