Adoption of Bologna declaration on higher education

The Minister of Education, Dr Louis Galea, left Malta today on his way to Bologna, Italy, where he will be attending a two-day Conference for European Ministers of Education relating to the process of European harmonisation in the area of higher education. The Ministers will be discussing and adopting a Declaration setting out a framework to establish a European Area of Higher Education within the first decade of the new century. The meeting is a follow-up to the initiative undertaken by France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom in May of last year. The initiative resulted in the adoption by the four countries of the Sorbonne Joint Declaration on the "harmonisation of the architecture of the European higher education system".

The Conference's objective is to discuss the Universities' central role in developing European cultural dimensions, and to create a European area of higher education as a key way to promote citizens' mobility and employability, and the Continent's overall development.

European Ministers will be discussing how to concert Governments' action for the attainment in the next ten years of the following objectives:

• Adoption of a system of easily readable and comparable degrees, also through the implementation of the Diploma Suppliment, in order to promote European citizens' employability and the international competitiveness of the European higher education system;

• Adoption of a system essentially based on two main cycles, undergraduate and graduate, the first too relevant to the European labour market as an appropriate level of qualification. Access to the second cycle shall require successful completion of first cycle studies, lasting normally three years;

• Establishment of a system of credits – such as in the ECTS system – as a proper means of promoting the most widespread student mobility. Credits could also be acquired in non-higher education contexts, including lifelong learning, provided they are recognized by receiving Universities;

• Elimination of the remaining obstacles to the effective exercise of the rights to free movement and equal treatment with particular attention to:

• students: access to study and training opportunities and related services;
• teachers, researchers and administrative staff: recognition and valorisation of periods spent in a European contest researching, teaching and training, without prejudicing their pension and social security rights.

• Promotion of European co-operation in quality assurance with a view to develop comparable cryteria and methodologies;

• Implementation of the necessary European dimensions in higher education, particularly with regards to curricular development, inter-institutional co-operation, mobility schemes and integrated programmes of study, training and research.

Dr Louis Galea is heading a delegation made up of Dr Roger Ellul-Micallef, Rector of the University, and Mr Albert Callus, the Minister's Assistant Private Secretary.