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Last Updated on Tuesday, 28 May 2013 19:26

SATURDAY 20 APRIL 2013

‘ASPECTS OF EDUCATION IN EUROPE’
Problems and solutions

On Saturday 20 April 2013 members from all parts of the country came to the University Women’s Club in London to hear 4 well-qualified speakers discuss various elements of education within a European context.

Our first speaker, Ruth Sinclair – Jones, is Head of EU programmes at the British Council which includes the Erasmus project, begun in 1987 and funded by the European Union. Its aim is to encourage student and staff mobility in the EU. 3 million students have already taken part.

We then heard from Katie Belos dos Santos, originally from Portugal, who participated in the programme. She described her experiences and how the programme had been of benefit to her. She now works in this country mainly as a police and court interpreter, translator and language examiner as well as lecturing part-time at the University of Portsmouth.

After lunch we heard from Anne Lonsdale, CBE, Deputy High Steward of Cambridge University and Trustee of the European Humanities University, now in exile in Vilnius (Lithuania). The latter was founded in 1995 to promote democracy and integration into Europe but was closed by the Belarus President Lukashenko  for running courses which he considered to be too pro-western. She also spoke about the organisation CARA (Council for Assisting Refugee Academics) of which she is the Chair. It was established in 1933 but its work still carries on today.

Finally Dr. Gillian Hilton, former Head of Education at Middlesex University, now heads international teams assessing Higher Education programmes for the Department of Education and Science in the Baltic States. Despite regular visits to these countries improvement has been slow.

Sheila Youngs