Education

Dear students and fellow Europeans,

Education is the most potent answer to bring about a tolerant and respectful society. Europe's future relies on citizens who will respect human rights and banish prejudice, hatred, and racism. It is imperative to enable the continent's youth to experience Europe in all its beauty and diversity.

Meeting people with different cultural backgrounds and staying in their home countries encourages tolerance, respect, and understanding. The Human Rights Declaration (§26, par. 2) states that education shall promote "understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups" it is thus necessary to develop student mobility into an integral element of our educational systems so that young people will learn not only about economics, literature or sciences but also - and just as importantly - about each other's thoughts, values and traditions.

We believe that student mobility is thus a fundamental element in assuring the sustainability of the European project and of European societies as a whole. There needs to be time and space to gain a practical understanding of Europe's core values, which in turn will empower young people to find a common European identity.

In 1999, 27 European Ministers of Education signed the Bologna declaration and created the European Higher Education Area to increase border-crossing mobility and employability. Meanwhile, there are 47 countries participating in the Bologna process. Twelve years after its implementation a great deal has been achieved in changing degree structures and furthering Europe's capacity to compete for overseas fee-paying students, but the student mobility has not received the boost many would have expected, neither quantitatively nor qualitatively. Student mobility is still reserved to only a handful of students, remains socially selective, and those who had the chance to study abroad for a semester or a year still face recognition and replacement problems after the exchange period.

Today, neither political nor geographical boundaries exist any longer in the EU. It is about time for all activists and those responsible to tear down all socio-economic barriers that hinder the achieving and surpassing the objective of having 20% of all European students become mobile no later than 2020.

We therefore call upon politicians, rectors, economic agents, and the society at large to work together for furthering support for student mobility!

• National Governments and the European Commission must rethink the financing of mobility: available grants are locked into national structures that do not account for the imbalance in the demand for mobility across the continent nor take the difference of living costs in its fullest consideration. Grant mechanisms should be made more flexible and they must not, under any circumstance, privilege shorter stay instead of longer and more exchanges.
• Higher Education Institutions must take more institutional responsibility for furthering mobility, notably as far as curricular design is concerned. Flexible curricular pathways lend themselves to studies abroad much more than strictly and densely packaged curricula. A European Code of Best Practices on course design could further the adoption of "mobility windows" and enable the establishment of a threshold of optional courses.
• The European Commission and the European Parliament must put more emphasis on the quality of credit mobility, notably with respect to recognition. A positive step would be to appoint an Ombudsman able and willing to take legal action to defend students whose Learning Agreements have not been fully respected.

Campus Europae Student Council
Erasmus Student Network

www.rideforyourrights.org

Ride for your Rights! Update from Andreas Reiterer on Vimeo.

The 22nd October is now written into history of ESN Lithuania as the day of PRIME conference, which was first of this scale event in ESN Lithuania, as the first PRIME conference, which was held some time ago, did not have so many attendants, including Representative from European Commision, Ministry of Education and Science and many Higher education institutions. It needs to be mentioned that we were proud to welcome ESN AISBL Treasurer Damien Lamy-Preto and the main ESN PRIME coordinator Justyna Pisera.

The conference was hosted by ESN MRU Vilnius and covered the results of PRIME project. Both international and national results were presented. As we know, academic exchange is a multilevel process and the principle of integrity must be kept discussing future strategies of students mobility. Organizers were glad to see that after presenting the material of the conference, quite a huge discussion evolved. Participants were expressing their opinions on the results of PRIME project, discussing success and failure stories and suggesting some improvements. So, hopefully, each of the participants got something valuable from this event.

The good news are that the general results of PRIME are much better than the previous year. The worst situation is considered to be in Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, while Lithuania is in the 8th place. So, our situation is comparably not bad, but there are still things to improve.

To mention shortly, here is the index of recognition in Lithuania:

Full recognition: 79,78 %

Not full recognition: 20,22 %

More results are coming soon as a separate edition.

EDUK8 Training!

The network is proud to present you the first ESN International training within the ESN EduK8 project. Now, you might wonder what ESN EduK8 is about? ESN EduK8 is a training system in ESN, which was launched this year. The aim is to train on the international level ESN EduK8 trainers, who will forward their knowledge and competences to the national and local level through series of training. 
 
As this system was launched this year, we will also hold the first international training this year in Hungary, Esztergom (close to Budapest). This first training event will focus on communication skills, team management, how to become a trainer, feedbacking and funding opportunities in Europe. The training will take place from the 21st until the 27th of August 2011. For this one-week training, led by trainers from the European Youth Forum and the American Field Service, the participation fee is are only 180€. 
 
The registration and further information about the exact programme is to be found here. The deadline for registration is now: 16th of July 2011. The maximum capacity of the training is 50 places and if necessary a selection procedure will be applied. We however highly encourage all people being interested in the field of trainings and the topics included in the training to apply for the event, as the most important factor is the motivation and the willingness to learn !!
 
The whole OC and ESN International are looking forward to welcome you in Hungary for the first training and the start of the ESN EduK8 training system!!

Are you a former Erasmus student?

You have been on exchange and you faced problems with courses recognition upon return? Or maybe you didn’t meet any obstacles? Help us in the research and fill the questionnaire for students.

It will take you only about 15 minutes, but your contribution can help us to improve the Erasmus programme in future. Share with others you experience from recognition process before, during and after the Erasmus exchange!

By completing the questionnaire, you will contribute to PRIME 2010 study report, published after the end of research. It will analyze the results and provide conclusions and recommendations for the future of Erasmus programme.

For further information and all necessary materials, please contact project coordinator, Justyna Pisera, [email protected] or national coordinator, Laurynas Gancauskas,[email protected].