OBESSU Members go international!
Brussels, 7th-13th December 2013 – OBESSU Member Organisations’ International Officers got together to build up their skills on working on European level at the 8th OBESSU Training Course for International Officers. The training course featured a panel on the topic of “Education in the 21st century” where main European stakeholders expressed their views on current trends in education and the ways they reshape education today.
The training course gathered about 50 participants from OBESSU Member Organisations, all who are working with international affairs. The main objectives of the event were to learn about the courses that the European institutions have set education for, the ways they affect national policies and the ways we can influence it though our advocacy.
Members of OBESSU got to learn about different bodies of the European Union and the Council of Europe – the ways they are structured, the types of decisions they can make, the affect their decisions have on a local level and also the ways OBESSU interacts with them. The participants were also addressed by a guest speaker from the EU-CoE Youth Partnership, Philipp Boetze.
Some of the main political debates that the event provoked were about the Rethinking Education Communication, Erasmus+, Opening Up Education, PISA tests and the European Parliament Elections 2014. Moreover, the event was a good chance to organise face-to-face consultations for the 3rd phase of the 3rd cycle of Structured Dialogue on Social Inclusion of Young People.
A part of the event was a panel about the education trends in the 21st century which featured Mr Joao Delgado from the European Commission, Jean-Philippe Restoueix from the Council of Europe, Thea Nesyba from the ETUCE and Rok Primožič from ESU. The panel was titled “A Dialogue With School Students”, particularly for its part where the guest panellists were debating in small groups with participants. The topic of these small discussions was which trend in education was for them the most outstanding one in the 21t century. The main perspective that came from the Commission was that employability skills and early school leaving are among top priorities when it comes to education; this was significantly different from the perspective the Council of Europe which emphasized a more learner-centered approach and inclusion in classrooms. ETUCE and ESU pointed out that the most urgent aspects of education nowadays are the usage of ICT in education and the comodification in education, respectively.
The event resulted in gained skills and knowledge on the European institutions and the debates on the European level, theoretical and practical work on advocating, and finally the fruitful outcomes from networking such as future joint ventures and collaborations of our members. We would like to thank all the participants for their active participation, shared ideas and engagement during the training course.
The Board of OBESSU
