EducationandTrainingintheEuropeofKnowledge.docVIP

Education and Training in the Europe of Knowledge Tessa Blackstone I want to begin by congratulating my three former Ministerial colleagues Claude Allegre, Luigi Berlinguer and Jurgen Ruttgers for their foresight and courage in signing the Sorbonne Declaration. It was a riskier action for them than for me. They were committing their own systems of higher education to much greater change than I. The Anglo-Saxon model that was proposed that day in May 1998 was essentially the one that prevailed in the United Kingdom as well as North America. We in Britain had to make relatively few adaptations. In France, Germany and Italy more change was required following the Declaration. Special praise should be heaped on Claude Allegre whose idea it was to move our systems closer together. He certainly deserves a place in history for thinking about how Europe should make progress in higher education and for driving this reform through with his characteristic enthusiasm and forcefulness ! None of the four of us, I suspect, imagined on that day in Paris six and a half years ago that it would trigger so much change so quickly. Only a year later I, along with Claude Allegre and 27 other European Ministers responsible for higher education signed a Declaration on the establishment of the European Area of Higher Education by 2010 and the promotion of the European system of higher education worldwide. The declaration has six objectives; the adoption of a system of easily readable and comparable degrees; the adoption of a system with two main cycles; undergraduate and graduate; the establishment of a system of credits recognised across the EU; the promotion of mobility between member states; the promotion of European co-operation in quality assurance and the promotion of the European dimensions in higher education. Since then a review of progress towards a European Area of Higher Education has taken place every two years. The Bologna meeting was followed by a summit in Prague in 2001 wh