Council of Europe/UNESCO Working Party on

Introduction to the topic

 Introduction to the topic 

1. The Working Party on Criteria and Procedures for the Assessment of Foreign Qualifications was appointed in 1995 to elaborate a draft recommendation. The Working Party met five times between November 1995 and November 1997. It started its work while the Convention was still being drafted and completed its draft half a year after the adoption of the Convention.

2. At the outset, the Working Party was appointed to address an important recognition issue. In the course of its work, it became apparent that this issue was closely linked to the Lisbon Recognition Convention, the work on which was progressing faster than even optimists could reasonably expect. For this reason, the decision was taken to foresee the draft recommendation as a subsidiary text to the Convention. This decision, however, implied that there would be a considerable time gap between the end of the drafting process and the consideration of the draft recommendation by the Convention Committee.

3. In the meantime, three important developments occurred which could not have been foreseen by the Working Party. On the one hand, the Diploma Supplement was revised in a joint pilot project involving the European Commission, the Council of Europe and UNESCO. The Working Party was aware of this revision but it had not progressed far enough to be taken account of in the text. The Diploma Supplement has now been completed and adequate account should be taken of it in the draft recommendation.

4. The second development is more complicated. As a treaty between States, the Convention covers qualifications belonging to the systems of education of Parties. The draft recommendation on criteria and procedures follows the same logic. However, an increasing number of qualifications are issued by institutions or programmes outside of national systems. These qualifications are the subject of the Working Party on Transnational Education, which was appointed in July 1998, has now finalized a draft code of good practice in the provision of transnational education. This draft code is submitted to the 2000 ENIC/NARIC meeting for consideration.

5. While the purpose of the recommendation and the code of good practice will be different, it is important to ensure that there be no contradictions between them. The draft Recommendation on Criteria and Procedures did, however, contain at least one statement which is in contradiction with the more recent discussions in the Working Party on Transnational Education. This concerned paragraph 28, in which it was recommended that assessment agencies strongly consider refraining from undertaking an assessment of a qualification which does not belong to a national system.

6. The third development concerns qualifications held by refugees, covered by Section VII of the Convention, where a Working Party was set up in 1999 to prepare a seminar on the subject and to consider how the assessment of undocumented qualifications held by refugees could be improved.

7. A new, ad hoc Working Party was therefore been set up to review the draft Recommendation on Criteria and Procedures in the light of developments since November 1997, and in particular the Diploma Supplement and the discussions in the Working party on Transnational Education. The Working Party met in Bruxelles on 2 March 2000.

 Status of the  document:

The draft Recommendation was discussed and approved by the ENIC Network at its meeting in Brussels on May 24-25, 2000. Following the approval at the ENIC/NARIC meeting, the draft Recommendation will be submitted to the Convention Committee for adoption in 2001.