NEAA took part in ENQA’s Members Forum 2024

Between 17 and 19 April 2024, the annual Members Forum of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) was held in the city of Hannover, Germany. The event included a conference and a session of the ENQA General Assembly. Hosts were one of the German agencies for qualityassurance in higher education - ZevA and the German Accreditation Council.

The meeting and conference were held at the Hannover University of Applied Sciences, where the main topics of discussion were the development of quality assurance policy in the European Higher Education Area and the EU, the European commission initiative announced on March 27, 2024 on the European Degree Label; development of policies for the quality of higher education in relation to microcredentials; Artificial Intelligence and the quality of education and others.

During the General Assembly session NEAA was represented by its President, prof. Eliza Stefanova, who exercised her voting rights. She was also awarded a certificate, certifying the renewal of NEAA’s membership in ENQA following and external review in 2022 and registration renewal in EQAR in 2023.

During the GA sessions an address (https://www.enqa.eu/wp-content/uploads/ENQA-briefing-note_European-Commission-HE-package_March-2024.pdf) was presented from ENQA to the 29-30 May 2024 conference of the ministers of education of EU member states in regards to the European Commission higher education policy package.

Another part of the Forum was the presentation of several thematic poster sessions, one of which was given by NEAA’s Junior Expert in International Cooperation, Dyani Kurulenko. The topic of the poster session was “Incorporating criteria for social inclusion in the framework of ESG”, and it centered on the START project, a consortium between NEAA, the Ministry of Education and Science of Bulgaria, ARACIS, the Romanian HEQA agency and the Bulgarian Council for Refugees and Migrants. The START project is focused on researching the possibility and necessity for incorporating criteria for inclusive education in HEIs, as well as normative and legislative amendments in relation to microcredentials in HE.