Discover the Power of Digital Signature Legitimacy for Higher Education in European Union

How to eSign a document: digital signature legitimacy for Higher Education in European Union

good afternoon welcome to the press conference of the education youth culture and sports council this is a meeting of today so this morning we will have the portuguese minister of higher education manuel etor and the minister of education thiago brendan rodriguez also with us commissioner maria gabrielle both ministers will give a short statement on education topics then i will give the floor to the commissioner of education and then finally you can make your questions minister manuela tour the floor is yours good afternoon and to everyone the council has adopted today two rather important conclusions um and then have a policy debate on our education the conclusions were first on the inclusion and the needs to guarantee open access to education throughout europe and the second conclusion on the critical role of the european universities alliances i believe my colleague will take care of the first issue and i'd like to focus this few minutes on the meaning of the conclusion which has been adopted about european agri education we are facing and we are leaving unprecedented times in europe and worldwide and the role of training and education in particular of agri-education is transforming our societies and will transform more and more our societies particularly in close articulation with research and innovation and that triangulation has become the key issue for the development of european higher education universities the conclusions adopt among many other issues three critical areas first the articulation between education and research through human resources particularly in terms of best practices of career development of recruitment in particular recruitment of young researchers and about reflects of talents and it has become very consensus throughout europe that european universities should play a critical role on promoting the recruitment of young researchers and better career development practices overall europe needs more scientists and role of higher education universities equate but there are two other issues one on joint degrees and joint accreditation particularly in terms of the simplification of current procedures particularly about the automatic recognition of joint degrees throughout europe in the european university alliances and the third critical issue has become a very important issues in the idea to have universities without walls and it refers essentially to labor market relevance and outcomes and more and more to the need to open formal and non-formal education to employers public and private employers and to give relevance to issues such as micro credentials in order to make sure that people at large and adults in particular learn throughout their life adults learning and particularly lifelong learning has become quite an equal throughout europe with different practices and certainly we should share the common values of learning them throughout our lives certainly the issues associated with funding with excellence and with the european values of multiculturality has been addressed in the policy debates and it was consensual around the the table the the common issue of guarantee a stepwise process towards the transformation of agri-education and particularly the conclusions of the working group that the commission established by december 2021. it was also important to refer that in the context of the ongoing conference on the future of europe the role of higher education in articulation with research in the innovation has become critical for the european project thank you thank you minister i will give now the floor to the minister of education please specifically inclusive we need to make sure that everyone can promote all the possibilities at all levels of education in all existing areas we also need to do more to identify uh the public policy measures that could help this education system for all of us we know that these principles of equity and inclusion in education uh are of main concern to all of us especially now with the covet 19 pandemic and the ministers of education had a very useful exchange of information and experience on the measures that each and every member states have taken this exchange of information was also facilitated by the online platform launched by the portuguese presidency and we uh have seen and continue seeing uh the great cooperative spirit between the member states especially now in these very difficult situation that we're living through at the moment where sharing and mutual learning is absolutely vital thank you minister i will give now the floor to the commissioner maria ladies and gentlemen first of all i'd like to thank the portuguese presidency for organizing this council of ministers for higher education this morning's minister as the minister has said led to the adoption of a number of conclusions which will be the basis for our action to accompany a european higher education and education during the digital transformation this follows on from our february's informal meeting and we're particularly keen to see equal access to education inclusion right uh from the start of my mandate of my little commissioner i have always defended the principle of making it possible everybody to be successful which is about our european principle of solidarity we've been through the kobit 19 pandemic crisis which is only served to highlight existing inequalities and has even increased so many inequalities to achieve the objectives of access to education and training and success for everyone is a long-term project though and that includes our initiative on the european education area it to be successful we require strong political determination commitment on part of all players in the commission also we have a number of actions but i'd like to mention three of them first of all we'd like to propose in july a recommendation to cancel on a hybrid learning uh far be it for me to impose even more screen on our children but hybrid can also mean visits to forests and museums or partnerships with historical locations and theaters to make learning lively and situated in present reality in the context of this future proposal for the very first time we've also consulted directly children who have shared drawings with us showing what their learning environment ideally would look like and children like to see open schools outdoor schools a warm social place which combines theoretical and practical learning so we need to encourage new ways of teaching and learning so we include more students who might otherwise fall behind and this also is part of our digital education action plan for period 2021 2027. secondly we've shown ambition when it comes to allowing young europeans to be successful next year we're presenting a new uh initiative pathways for school success which will seek to promote success in school by reducing in particular of a number of schools that don't achieve basic skills levels or drop out of school too early and then we have commissioned a group of experts to work up proposals on favorable learning conditions for those particular risks of failure at school and also work is to be done on well-being at school inclusion is one of guiding threads of our erasmus plus program for the next seven years our first calls for proposals for projects have been launched recently now this should be available for all learning ages from kindergarten to university and beyond also i'd like to recall that european universities are pioneers when it comes to uh transforming higher education it's crucial that we work together with member states and stakeholders in higher education to create the necessary conditions for this sector to become more interconnected more innovative more inclusive more digital and more sustainable the commission commits uh itself to supporting this endeavor through erasmus plus with a supplement to the horizon europe program beyond the need for sustainable finance universities have a number of other challenges and obstacles to tackle when we need to work across borders and we need to work together to remove these obstacles it's important to guarantee the maintenance of an inclusive model to encourage diversity and expand alliances whilst respecting institutional independence offering possibilities of cooperation even beyond the european union we plan incorporation member states and stakeholders in the sector and to have a european diploma which would imply excellence in higher education at international level we'll have an opportunity talking about this as we move towards completing the european area of education and talk about the european uh digital education program which are the two cornerstones for our educational future to underpin recovery in europe we need to find a shorter forms of learning which are also uh certified by micro certificates that's an innovatory way of supporting lifelong learning we need european standards so that we can ensure greater transparency reliability recognition and portability of such micro certificates and we'll make a proposal to the council by the end of the year to that end so i'd like to thank again portuguese presidency for their conclusions and uh for the opportunity to debate these issues and i do hope that this will enable us so to make excellence a matter for everyone we can now start uh with the questions you all know the procedures when you have the full turn on your camera and your speaker introduce yourself with name and which media you belong and who you address your questions to so please just raise your hands we have um andrea nerves from antenna yes good afternoon i have a question about uh equity and equal opportunities for all and i'd like to know if you have been thinking about the problems that we're going to face during the recovery and i'd also like to know how can this inclusion uh also involve a erasmus which is vital for exchanges between people first to the minister of higher education thank you very much for that question well the answer is clearly yes certainly in portugal and it of course it depends on the national options that each member state has taken in drawing up their recovery and resilience plans but uh the conclusions that have been uh adopted today are quite clear about the need for adequate financing in order to underpin our education and training systems in portugal in particular the recovery and resilience plan is focusing on two particularly important initiatives sir the uh particular impulse for the youngsters so as to help youngsters access tertiary education especially in the sectors of sciences and mathematics and also to encourage them to have short-term training sessions this is something we also discussed today and we need to make sure that we can uh flesh out the prospects of 50 percent of youngsters who access uh higher education and try and bring up that figure to 60 percent and we've also got the portuguese recovery and resilience plan a little focusing on uh encouraging and stimulating lifelong learning and and to make sure that adult education is encouraged especially lifelong training especially uh in the uh so-called higher education without walls now on erasmus in particular today portugal is very pleased to see that there's an increased participation in erasmus where at the same average levels of participation at uh the rest of europe but the european average still means only 10 of uh youngsters in higher education had access to erasmus or participated in erasmus so if you compared to 20 years ago it was uh basically two percent so improvements have been made significant uh progress for portugal but we need to do more to increase greater participation in erasmus portugal like other member states do have a clear plan to uh triple the participation in erasmus between this year and 2027. we've also got the erasmus plus program and in portugal on the 18th on julian july we hope to open up more posts and places in erasmus across europa and also open it up to other areas of education for example a secondary education and especially professional education so that everyone all youngsters can uh have a taste of erasmus and have the notion of participating in erasmus in many different dimensions so that is certainly our ambition this is something that we did discuss again today when we were talking about european universities initiative thank you thank you minister well very briefly just to respond to these very significant questions firstly inevitably the recovery and resilience plan that was tabled by portugal to the commission is currently being assessed and in the education sector we have more than a thousand million euros set aside for strategic actions in education and especially to make to boost the digital skills to set up digital laboratories and this will continue with our digital school initiative so we want through this transition to ensure that the new uh generations uh be able to respond to the challenges um in many areas are programming robotics as well as other digital skills so basically we want to broaden everything that we already do in our schools uh in the area of i.t information and communication we also want to modernize existing uh professions we want to improve our vocational training and take advantage of dual certification and have more than 350 specialized technological sectors centers set up to deal with informatics and aeronautics and big data all these tech areas that are absolutely fundamental so there's a great challenge especially when we're looking at opening up the school science clubs we need to open them up to encourage scientific education and to facilitate the access of youngsters to higher education in these areas and also encourage adult education through lifelong learning to have access to these digital skills as well and we want to mobilize we need to mobilize more than 30 000 vulnerable uh people to uh increase their participation in this area and this is something that we're going to be discussing over lunch today and uh we uh feel that the work being done on rni in portugal uh is a good example on uh erasmus yes we if you think that the uh program uh began back in 1987 portugal was um in uh the first round of uh youngsters participating in this and since 87 we've had more than 10 million people participating in this erasmus program and portugal sorry the commission is planning to have yet another 10 million participating in the near future now we've seen a whole series of other activities that have now been brought in under erasmus plus so we want to make sure that uh we are more inclusive and more focused and erasmus plus also wants to boost the possibility of attracting more youngsters not only higher education youngsters but also school youngsters to make sure that we can broaden the access of the youth to different uh areas under erasmus plus and to make sure that we uh also link up with the european solidarity fund which is now finally going to have its own framework program and make sure that youngsters in informal education can also be involved so certainly erasmus plus will hopefully have a positive spillover effect to european solidarity core programme commissioner silva merci thank you very much for your question first of all yes indeed if there is a positive example of how we can promote equality of opportunity it is indeed our dear erasmus plus program uh i'm going to tell you how much more inclusive new program will be it's one of our top programs i want an erasmus plus program by 2017 which is more inclusive more green and more digital the first thing our budget 28 billion years since the program was first launched in 87 we give them a possibility 10 million europeans to take advantages the objective now is have another 10 million by 2027 so we are multiplying the speed by fiverr secondly the new erasmus plus program is not just our four students in higher education we will be adopting the approach of lifelong learning which means that there'll be possibilities right from um being uh infant age through to being adult age uh various levels of education through the lifelong learning stressing in particular uh professional skills so with that in mind i think we have a strong message a second very specific aspect with the new erasmus plus program we'll be having new partnerships uh the more skills partnerships so that we can allow organizations have not yet had this experience to be able quickly and to join the program and another very specific aspect in particular for those who have fewer possibilities or fewer opportunities we have already proposed a financial backing for individuals and for those who accompany them when they go to have this experience i think these are very positive messages and it's up to all of us to make sure that erasmus plus program works together with national strategies with other programs in synergy so that this approach will bring about greater inclusivity whilst providing for excellence and more opportunities for european citizens merci i think we do not have any other questions so this is all the time we have for today anyway we will come back around 6 p.m today for the press conference on youth topics uh thank you and see you later thank you