Seminar&Conferences

On 17^th and 18^th October 2023, the final conference of the project RecoASIA was held in Bangkok, Thailand, gathering participants from Ministries and higher education institutions, project partners and representatives from UNESCO Bangkok and ASEAN secretariat.

During the opening day, project coordinators from the University of L’Aquila summarised the project results, presenting the deliverables produced and the goals achieved.

The roundtable on “Policy reflections: driving towards a more harmonized higher education space”, focused on policies in the field of Higher Education. It has been discussed the role of the harmonisation process of Higher Education in Asia and Europe, in the process of promoting international mobility among the two regions, and further ways to cooperate among the two regions.

Participants had the chance to share their thoughts and the project impact on their recognition procedures and how their organisations benefited from the RecoASIA activities.

Digitalisation was a topic discussed in the perspective of providing high-quality data sharing and countering education fraud, a topic that has been touched during the project implementation. Other key areas of interest highlighted during the final conference, useful for a further work for cooperation (also beyond the project framework) have been transnational education and recognition of refugee qualifications with incomplete documentation.

During the final conference, the importance of the national reports created in the framework of RecoASIA project has been underlined as well, being such tools relevant for the work of credential evaluators evaluating qualifications from partner countries.

​During the second and last day of conference, participants visited Mahidol University campus, where the Steering Committee has held the last two sessions discussing project sustainability, financial management issues and future possibilities for cooperation.

The international conference on “Qualification Framework and recognition of qualifications and credentials”, organised in the framework of the EU co-funded RecoASIA project, was held in Colombo, Sri Lanka from 28^th to 30^th June 2023.

Owing to its fields of application, the discussion has been joined by various stakeholders: representatives from the International Labour Organisation, the British Council and Ministries of Education, together with RecoASIA project partner institutions.

The conference scope was to share experiences and evaluate different perspectives on qualification framework to enhance cooperation in the Asian region.

During the first day, the Cambodian, Mongolian, Thai and Vietnamese education systems and qualification frameworks were presented, as well as the example from the European Higher Education Area shown by the Estonian ENIC-NARIC centre. A presentation of Sri Lanka national qualification frameworks followed, to prepare the floor for the discussion of the design of a single Sri Lanka national framework.

On the second working day, the focus has been on recognition of qualification and credentials: UNESCO intervened sharing the reference document of the Tokyo Convention, which constitutes the starting point for the promotion of fair recognition through the Asia-Pacific Network of National Information Centres.

Afterwards, credential recognition practices were presented by each Asian countries and the day closed with the state of art of the mobility flows in Sri Lanka and a discussion on the next steps for the design and implementation of a National Centre of Recognition of Qualifications.

On 3^rd and 4^th October 2022, the international conference “Strengthening capacity for internationalization of higher education in the area of credential recognition among EU and Asian countries” was held at the Hanoi University, gathering RecoASIA project partners and Vietnamese higher education institutions.

It was an opportunity to present the systems and take stock of the results obtained. The partners confirmed their commitment and motivation towards the co-operation for the international academic and professional mobility.

The second part of the meeting was dedicated to a seminar on “Recognition of Refugee Qualifications”. The main objective was to share skills and knowledge related to the evaluation methodology of the European Qualifications Passport for Refugees, developed by the Council of Europe in partnership with the ENIC-NARIC centres for the recognition of refugee qualifications in cases of partial or no documentation, in compliance with Article VII of the Lisbon Convention for the recognition of qualifications.

Therefore, each country had the possibility to inform about the current situation on the refugee qualifications issue in their country.

The visit proved to be an important moment for project progress and an opportunity for future cooperation between the parties.

This seminar – held online – targeted staff of higher education institutions and national recognition centres from partner countries, providing a comparative perspective on different approaches on evaluation and recognition procedures. Among the main topics, a special attention was placed on the importance of creating a network among centres as well as among credential evaluators, in order to share approaches and methodologies on qualifications recognition both at national and international level.

All materials are available on the restricted area of the RecoASIA website.

The outbreak of Covid-19 had a huge impact on education, higher education and recognition. The temporary closure of educational institutions led to significant changes in qualifications, including examinations at the end of upper secondary school. This situation had a negative impact on access to higher education, not only in terms of assessment procedures and access requirements, but also in terms of equality of treatment of students, fair recognition and ensuring the right to education.

The webinar was the occasion to discuss on internationalization, fair recognition of qualifications, and information sharing at regional level, aimed at supporting the current and future dialogue of regional and interregional cooperation in the field of recognition.

All materials are available on the restricted area of the RecoASIA website.