Participation in the Ukraine – National Peer Counselling Meeting (14-15.02.2024, online)
On 14-15 February 2024, a strategic meeting of the Ukrainian delegation and a wide range of stakeholders in the field of higher education was held in Budapest with the leadership and experts of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) and the European Register of Quality Assurance Agencies for Higher Education (EQAR).
Andriy Butenko, Head of the National Agency for External Quality Assurance of Higher Education (NAQA), delivered a welcoming speech, thanking his European colleagues for their support, recommendations and assessment of the results of the implementation of the National Action Plan for External Quality Assurance for 2022-2023. Andriy Butenko expressed special gratitude to our defenders, thanks to whom Ukraine is struggling and making a big step forward every day in various spheres of life. Valeria Csepe, President of the Hungarian Quality Assurance Agency (HAA), which became the host, also delivered a welcoming speech and congratulated the Ukrainian delegation.
The program of the first part of the meeting was devoted to familiarization with the work of ENQA and EQAR, presentation of the higher education system of Ukraine and the system of quality assurance of higher education.
Presenting the higher education system of Ukraine, Mykhailo Wynnytskyj, Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine, HERE told the participants of the meeting about educational reforms and qualitative changes in the system, starting from 2014. He emphasized that Ukrainian education is now based on European values, especially regarding openness and transparency, and also spoke about the realities in which the entire system currently operates: 3798 educational institutions suffered from shelling and bombing during the full-scale invasion, and 437 are not subject to restoration.
Svitlana Shytikova, coordinator of the National Erasmus+ Office in Ukraine, reminded that Ukrainian universities have begun to create internal quality assurance systems based on the experience of universities of the European Union within the framework of the Tempus and Erasmus+ projects. The team of experts on higher education reform has been actively cooperating with the National Agency since day one and is ready to continue to cooperate closely.
On the second day of the meeting, the participants focused on discussing the principles of the independent activities of the National Agency. They discussed in detail potential challenges in the work, the role and function of the state; parameters of independence: requirements and expectations, as well as problems of financial and organizational independence.